


Day Arising

by StudioRat



Series: Nothing Emboldens Sin So Much As Mercy [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Age Difference, Background Relationships, Companionable Snark, Consensual Kink, Consensual Telepathy, Culture, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dark Magic, Difficult Decisions, Eventual Romance, Explicit Consent, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fealty, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Loyalty, Memory Alteration, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Past Relationship(s), Plague, Plants, Polyamory, References to past trauma, Sexual Fantasy, Sisters, Slow Burn, War, dark fantasies, prisoners of war in the background, references to underage sexual activity in the background
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 61
Words: 49,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24297190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat
Summary: When the King accepts a petition, by law he must attend the eldest petitioner first, and he must attend her until her petition is fulfilled or she withdraws it, howsoever many appointments become necessary.The Great King Ganondorf Dragmire, however,isthe Law. His ruthless glory forged entire legends and his reign reshaped the world.It is written that the petition ofloatta vaisaNialet avadha Davayu was many years in tending.This is her story.
Relationships: Ganondorf/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Nothing Emboldens Sin So Much As Mercy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1579960
Comments: 115
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nebulyx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nebulyx/gifts), [emi_rose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emi_rose/gifts), [safetycloset](https://archiveofourown.org/users/safetycloset/gifts), [lastSaskatchewanPirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastSaskatchewanPirate/gifts), [Cillanoodle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cillanoodle/gifts), [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts), [GingerLotus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerLotus/gifts), [bloodsexsugarmagick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodsexsugarmagick/gifts), [sourboy (jonashootme)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonashootme/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Flower of Twilight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14906384) by [Bartkartoffeln](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bartkartoffeln/pseuds/Bartkartoffeln), [StudioRat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat). 
  * Inspired by [Sun and Moon](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6565528) by [Bartkartoffeln](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bartkartoffeln/pseuds/Bartkartoffeln), [StudioRat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat). 



> >   
> When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes  
> I all alone beweep my outcast state,  
> And trouble deaf heav'n with my bootless cries,  
> And look upon myself, and curse my fate,  
> Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,  
> Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,  
> Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,  
> With what I most enjoy contented least;  
> Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,  
> Haply I think on thee, and then my state,  
> Like to the lark at break of day arising  
> From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate.  
>  For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings  
>  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.  
>  \- Sonnet 29  
> 

Nialet avadha Davayu is a month from her nineteenth birthday when she takes the purple veils of mourning for the fourth time. Her vaba urges her to name herself formally Varan, to wrap herself in a formal year of separation from the pattern of her life before. If she leaves the highlands, the apricots will fail. The ironvines will not set blossom in time to bear enough fruit. Ironically, the Sun’s Heart flowers are sickly this spring also, and if their seeds are weak, the hulls will not have enough pigment to produce the rich purple dye everyone needs so often.

The weather has been erratic, and no one else in her tribe has the way of seeing what the wild gardens need before it is too late. 

“It is what it is,” she tells her reflection in her late amali’s rose-tinted mageglass mirror. A gift from the last prince, when they were young together, decades ago. 

No one knows what happened to him.

No one even remembers when he vanished.

It is said, quietly, in the shadows, when the elders are distant, that Hyrule happened.

Hyrule happens a lot.

Calybrel Anjusati Chalut is the prince now. He is three months into the trials of knowledge, but there is no  _ time _ to wait for him to flower into the king they need. Hyrule has raised the price of wheat and cheese to five hundred rupee a barrel, and Vosterkun is raiding the northern mesas again, stealing ironhorn cattle and precious vicuña the People can ill afford to lose. 

The Exalted summons warriors to raid the marshy grasslands on the southeastern banks of the Thundering River.

Beytu and Padda and Setta and Mikau are answering. They are boasting to everyone how many prizes they will take, angling for favors and sweets from the avadha who stay behind if they will bring back this or that bauble, glossy softlands mares or sweet Hylian preserves, viols or flutes, indigo or madder - or a Hylian captive for everyone to amuse themselves with when they return victorious in the summer.


	2. Chapter 2

Nialet is twenty. The apricots will give no fruit this year at all - a late freeze killed every bud on every branch. She begs for the dust from the grain pots to feed the bees. She begs her littlest golden sisters not to move their hive. She promises them next year will be better.

Setta urges her to come away raiding. Padda says the orchards do not need her when they are already barren. Maike suggests she ask the Third Roc to assign her to northwest circuit this year under Beytu. She promises it will be an easy campaign in soft country. She naturally rises early, and the others will be glad of someone to volunteer for first watch. Ashai says guarding the rear of the column may not be glorious, but in the softlands  _ everything _ is profitable.

Nialet quiets them with a promise to consider it. At nadir, she rises in secret and takes her bow from the armory. She lays a wager with herself, and marks a dozen arrows. She turns an hourglass - and sprints through the gardens to test herself against a basic circuit run for the first time in three years.

When she was ilmaha, all her friends dreamed of being Varcha or Dhana together, living rich and glittering lives at some border fortress, raising all their kinsisters to fame and comfort. The Sands had other ideas, and in the last decade half her yearmates have joined the ancestors. The avadha who remain draw close together, and in the winters they make the long journey west to join the moon-path amalis and the ilmaha of their tribes. 

Beytu avadha Saiev is not an elder, but rather everyone’s eldest sister, and without her, the tribe would surely fall to pieces in grief.

Setta will not go with them this year. She is Varan now, and the elders send her to guard the storerooms of the Golden Fortress, where the Legions train in the Lady’s Quiver and the Girdle Bridge crosses the Thundering River below the sacred Mother and Daughter stones.

Prince Calybrel is six months into the Trial of the Serpent Crown - and three months pregnant. Rumor from the south says his lover has fallen ill. He leaves the Exalted to manage the Golden Legions, and the Council of Elders to manage the alliances of the tribes, and pours himself into mysticism and magic, seeking a cure. Their sole surviving ilmaha has run away, and the Prince has not even noticed. 

The rumors say he is going mad.

Nialet misjudges the leap from the sixth tower, and lands badly. She limps to the storerooms and picks the lock on the cabinet of potions. Beytu catches her at it, but she is a canny sandrat, and a good friend, though she is old enough to be her amali. She helps bind her ankle, and consoles her over the loss of her private wager. She takes her to the east walls, and they drink chiba under the stars together. 

Beytu says war is not glorious like Ashai says, or easy as Maike says. The northwest circuit she commands is a good one, for the right kind of warrior, but does reach deep into Hyrule’s pockets. There is no farmland to seize there - it is horse country, and hard to defend. The People cannot afford the lives necessary to take it, and they cannot secure it against the glittering might of Hylian armies when the pale softlanders come to take it back.

Beytu says the Sands named her Davayu for a reason, and she will only make herself miserable on the warrior’s path. She says the winds that decimated the valleys and gardens will surely have withered crops in Hyrule also, and they will be even more thirsty for blood in consequence.

Nialet sits with the rebuke, and with the temptation to rebel against it. 

“I want a family,” she says at last. “My green children are not enough to fill my heart.”

Beytu laughs at her. “Going to war serves the opposite end, avha.”

“Even if my spirit never truly blossoms for another, I cannot be amali alone. However much I want it - I know myself. I cannot be  _ enough _ for a child to thrive. My yearmates who  _ want _ a bond are happily paired or in mourning. Ashai says the boughs of Hyrule are heavy with landless voesh-”

“She’s right, but also wrong. Hyrule has many men, of every shape and size as long as it’s  _ short _ . They breed faster than they can portion fields, and that makes them hungry. Not always in good ways. Ever met one of them?”

“A few. Years ago. Before the Summer Dragon Market dried up.”

Beytu nods sagely. “Fuck any of ‘em?”

Nialet stammers and swears in shock. She’s always been vulgar, but this isn’t a joke or bawdy gossip. It’s personal.

Beytu laughs, and passes the bottle of chiba. “If it’s a baby you want, that’s  _ kinda _ how you get one. So if you’re serious about stealing a Hylian voe to plow your fields, you need to nerve yourself to test some blades first and make sure you’re dragging home one that suits. Exchanging a poor tool for a better gets  _ complicated _ , with Hylians.”

Nialet sighs. “I don’t want a  _ captive _ , even if I had the wealth to feed him. I want - va’dyath. Moonlight in my heart as well as my bed, who will love our ilmaha.”

“Have you considered making friends with a hot Varcha from a few years ahead or behind you? Lancers have reputations for endurance for a reason.”

Nialet winces. “Warriors burn my tongue like viper’s blood. I need  _ moonlight _ to soften my winds.”

“Tell you what. I fooled around with this bookish type a few years back, she’s got some  _ commendable _ virtues, unf. I don’t know her opinion on kids, but she’s a damn good lay if your taste runs to voesh figures, and if you don’t find the right kind of spark together, maybe she has a friend, you know?”

“We will have nothing in common,” sighs Nialet, pouring more chiba on her tongue, even though it’s Legion-style and far too sharp for her. 


	3. Chapter 3

Targa is not a good lay. She is a  _ great _ lay. She is broad in the right places, and soft in the right places, and she is softspoken and clever.

She is seven years older, and she is not sure about starting a family, but willing to try.

Nialet is common and plain. Her tribe does not have much to offer the People, especially when harvests have been indifferent or irregular. She will not have more than one opportunity to start over if a first bond goes poorly. She does not want to  _ try _ for family, and fail. Her heart is too small and brittle for that, in the same way it is too dry and thin to nurture a child alone. Din shaped her for highlands thornoak groves, and ilmaha need rich oasis gardens.

No amount of knowing it cures the longing. 

Targa brings news from the south. The Prince has moved his whole palace west. Just - one night it was above the Thunderstone fortress, and the next morning it stood on the crest of Twin Rock, five leagues away. His magic is growing frighteningly strong. His consort’s health is worse, and he is six months heavy with child - but their daughter has returned from the Sands in glory. She brought trophies of moldorm chitin and lizal horn, and her Name is Nabooru avadha Saiev Chalut at the age of seven.

Rumor says she has sharp spiriteyes.

More dangerous rumors say she has had a vision that the child of the Prince and his consort will grow up to become King.

No one dares voice the doom implied by such prophecy. The Great Rova have servants everywhere, and they are swifter to punish treason than even the Prince.

Nialet does not have long to grow a true friendship with Targa. Messengers come from the Second Roc, summoning every able-bodied warrior to the border fortresses even though it is far too early to be starting any spring campaign. The snowmelt has not yet woken the Thundering River, and it is ill-omened to cross into the softlands before it does.

Other messengers come from the Exalted. The Legions are being reordered. Every hand not busy with an ilmaha of her own flesh and capable of lifting a weapon, must. Regardless of her Name. Half the tribe must report for duty in three days. 

Nialet is chosen to serve at the distant palace. 

Targa is sent to the Dragon’s Maw.

She learns on her fourth morning in the watchtowers of the Lotus Palace that she will need the purple veils she packed for superstition after all.

Targa’s unit never reached the fortress above the Maw.

Hyrule happened, as it so often does.

Nialet learns on the fourth night at the Lotus Palace that Beytu is assigned to the royal halls, and she learns on the fifth morning what it is to be too hungover to stand.


	4. Chapter 4

Nabooru avadha Saiev is an  _ intensely _ unpleasant child. By law she is a woman and a warrior, but she is  _ seven _ , and arrogant as a crow. She is proud of her sworddancing skill, and she is proud of her Chalut bloodline. She is not acquainted with the meaning of fear, and she is convinced that she knows everything that is worth knowing, simply because she is Named. When she decides lessons are boring, she just - leaves. No one can stop her, because she is no longer ilmaha, and answers only to the leaders of her house.

None of her kin even try, for they are all in full mourning as Varan. Nabooru wears the tight mirror-embroidered purple tunic and billowing silk sirwal of full mourning, but she refuses veils, and she refuses to surrender her warrior title.

No one has the heart to curb her when she tries to give orders and corrections to the Elite or the palace guard. She has lost her amali to fever, and the Prince is raving mad. Every healer the Legions can spare now serves in the palace, desperate to keep the prince from hurting himself, his child, or anyone else.

Any day now, the prince  _ should _ deliver, and then the Elders can discuss what is to be done to heal his madness. Day after day, the baby does not awaken.

The healers swear the seedling is still alive. Nabooru threatens to kill anyone who hurts her baby brother. The Great Rova come to the palace every night, but even they cannot repair the Prince’s reason. It is as hard to overhear the raving of the Prince as it is to forget it, and Nialet knows she does not even know the half of the pain, for she is only obliged to hear it one day in four. The Exalted rotates her from tower to storeroom to gate to hall. She rotates most of the guard often.

The Firsts are not so lucky. Beytu is a  _ raider _ , and for fifteen years she has led a detachment of swift horse to strike and steal and bring their harvest home before Hyrule can stop them. She is a warrior made to  _ move _ , but the Exalted in her wisdom has portioned her the command of the central palace guard, patrolling five hundred feet of terrace, hall, and stair around the Prince, day after day.

Nialet saves her portion of majir for the old woman, and encourages her in bawdy tales to help her forget her duty at mealtimes. She is not surprised to learn Beytu has intimate knowledge of Hylian bedsports, but there are certain stories that strike the ear differently in the way she trails off between thoughts, in the way she corrects herself when she speaks of a lover’s complexion or hair color, or little details of their house.

It is common enough to indulge a casual tumble or take captives, but it is many decades since the Exalted granted permission for a moon-path Hylian to join any house with full rights under the Law. It is treason for an active warrior to forge a lifebond without permission from her commander, First or not. It is treason for an active raider to lay with the same Hylian for more than four nights unless they are a captive. It is treason to trade with the Enemy.

Beytu is a friend and a dear sister. Nialet will not betray her.


	5. Chapter 5

It is nearly solstice. 

The black winds are sweeping across the Sand Sea. They will reach the palace before the supply unit does. Everyone prays the storerooms are full enough. Slow-moving storms by their very nature tend to linger. No one will be able to leave the safety of stone while they rage, and every Ramal and Kharish in the palace is racing to stock the eight towers and four gatehouses for a month of unrelieved isolation. The central palace at least has the kitchens, and the largest storerooms. Every voltfruit stalk and pinpad plant and silverleaf and sun crown for miles has been cut to the root to be roasted and dried to feed the Legion. The oasis is carefully buried under precious ironwood planks and dry-laid granite.

Nialet speaks to the Kharish when her First is busy. She quietly teaches the other archers to sacrifice some of their water to nourish their forbidden  _ fresh  _ voltfruit and pinpad and sun crown leaves. She teaches them how to hide their makeshift gardens on the trap terraces.

Some of the career warriors laugh at her.

Nialet prays the Mother takes Her black winds away before their laughter kills them.

The Prince is in labor pains.

On the third hour of his labor, the black winds swallow the palace. Red lightning cracks through the darkness, trembling the stones. Nialet stands with her golden spear on the inlaid gold sunflower that blossoms in the doorway of the royal chambers. Beytu paces between the bright lotus columns. Nabooru comes and goes as she damn well pleases. The birthing chamber is no place for an ilmaha of her age, but she is a woman by law, closest kin of the prince, and no one can forbid her.

Nialet wishes vainly that Setta wasn’t many days’ ride away at the Golden Fortress. She has been in the birthing chair six times, and their last news from the east says her seventh seedling might in fact be two. She would know how to feel about the noise from the other side of the gilded ebony doors.

On her second rotation, the Varcha assigned to the far side of the door isn’t subtle about her prayers. She says the Prince should have delivered four hours ago unless he is screaming for other reasons. Either way, the seedling is in grave danger.

Nabooru will not be persuaded to stay away.

On her third rotation, Nabooru is pestering Beytu to spar with her. She is impatient with the sword courts closed. She insists she must keep her bright Roc’s Talons sharp. It is a terrible idea. They are all exhausted, and even the howling of the black wind is not enough to drown out the madness and pain of the Prince. No one wants to slip into bloodrage before a child, and short rations began to compound the consequence of stress and short sleep when the storm was still under the far horizon.

The Saiev posted at the end of the hall relents, if only to distract the girl from the urgent prayers of the Varcha when one of the Ashak stumbles through the ebony doors covered in blood. The Prince is still screaming more often than not.

Nialet dares to ask the Ashak if the seedling lives. She shrugs helplessly. She says the flood of lifewater did not come with the blood, so they are probably not suffocating yet. Probably. She says the Prince refuses to allow his body to flower. Flowering is a thing of  _ avadha _ , and he is  _ l’voesh _ . Roundness is a state of the moon, not the sun. Bearing is a task for avadha, he is l’voesh. He will not hear that his seedling needs the Light. He has struck dead two Ashak already for the treason of trying to make him understand that it is nine months too late to deny the truth anyone can see.

Beytu grumbles her own treason: the prince is  _ not _ l’voesh tajli. He was never confirmed by the Council. She offers to strike the temple of the prince accidentally on purpose so the Ashak can free the seedling with their sacred obsidian blades.

The Ashak stares at her hands and says nothing.


	6. Chapter 6

The counting beads say it is summer solstice. Nialet reports to the royal hallways when the counting beads say it is dawn. She has endured the black winds before, but always before she has been able to feel the pattern of the heavens. She is not sure if it is because the black winds are less terrible in the highlands.

Beytu is asleep on her feet at the end of the hall, leaning on her spear. No one tries to wake her - they all know the Exalted has not rotated the Firsts enough. Nialet salutes Nabooru when she emerges from the royal chamber, scrubbing her fists over her eyes. 

The girl frowns up at her, one little brown hand drifting to the hilt of her honor knife. “Get out of my way, you  _ nobody _ .”

Nialet casts an arch glance around the hall. She is not in anyone’s way at all, least of all hers. A seven year old should-be-ilmaha is challenging her to a fight for the sake of fighting, and she does not have the first idea what words to weave for that.

The Prince howls in pain.

They both stare at the closed door. There is a new edge to the screaming.

“He’s going to die soon,” says Nabooru quietly. “My amali said we would all meet at the Ancestor’s Table, but Risoka is a week away with many fast horses.”

“There are many roads to the feast of spirits, some shorter than others,” says Nialet, then regrets it, for the girl stomps her foot and looses a primal, wordless howl. She stands firm before her rage, though a little voice in her chest says she should set her spear aside and scoop the child into her arms. The other voice in her chest says that would be a  _ very _ short road to meet her own ancestors. “The Ashak know their work. If there is anything that  _ can _ be done to strengthen either of them, they will do it. How long since you slept, avha?”

Nabooru pants for breath, her face flushed with fury still. “I lost count. Not that it’s any business of  _ yours _ .”

“Your suffering cannot help them. Go, drink, and find a place to lay down away from this. My avha taught me that even if you cannot sleep, your bones will thank you for it.”

Nabooru opens her mouth to object.

Thunder trembles the palace. In the middle of a black wind.

The Prince has stopped screaming.

Nabooru dashes back through the ebony doors.

Nialet reminds herself to breathe when the Prince howls again. At least that is normal. Insofar as anything in the Lotus Palace is normal.

Beytu touches her shoulder. She too has dark shadows around her eyes. “It will be over soon, one way or another.”

“Mother grant it thus,” intones the pious Varcha. “When my first was born, I thought for two days the flood would come any moment. Once it did, I was glad I held my tongue through the early pain, but at least it was over before afternoon. This-? Is  _ unholy _ .”

“Watch your tongue, girl, or do you want to meet the Great Ones?’ Beytu hisses, though she has said almost the same thing herself.

For several breaths there is no howl but the black winds.

A shrill new cry rises into the storm, piercing ear and heart. It is a wail of such pain and sorrow and rage as no one has ever heard, and every avadha in the hall has attended many births.

They all pray, pious or not.


	7. Chapter 7

Nabooru and her late amali are both right. Word comes through the spiritwinds and a dozen mageglass mirrors that Hyrule has breached Hemaar’s Ascent. Risoka Fortress begs the Great Rova for aid. 

The prince takes up his great black claymore with its baleful garnet and corundum ornament, and demands the Great Rova open a magic door for the Golden Legion. In the middle of a black wind. 

They obey. 

No one is surprised when every lantern in the palace burns purple that night.

Calybrel Anjusati Chalut is dead in the four hundredth year since the People have offered the Mother of Sands a true King.

The black winds do not lift.

Nabooru will not let anyone else hold her only living bloodkin for more than five minutes. They beg her to cease the heresy of saying a Nameless infant is her  _ brother _ . It is likewise forbidden to burden a newly awakened spirit with mortal words before the eighth day, but it is a lesser sin than the other, and everyone agrees the People need the omen young Nabooru offers in her defiance of the Law. 

She calls the baby  _ flower of hopefulness _ .

The Rova bring a dozen amali from a dozen tribes through the black wind every week to feed the infant they claim as their own. They decree no avadha may feed the child more than eight times, ever. Rajenaya Chalut ilmaha Rova must be raised perfectly impartial among all the tribes.

The Great Ones are old. They are canny. They have spent their entire long lives perfecting their powerful magic. Neither has ever raised a child. They do not know how much an infant  _ must _ eat.

Every single amali risks her neck lying to the Great Rova.

No one is sorry.


	8. Chapter 8

Nialet avadha Davayu is twenty-one in the season she returns to the highlands. 

War has shattered her spirit exactly as Beytu foretold. She hangs her bow in the armory with empty heart, and hides her weariness under the pale green mantle of the common wildcraft Davayu she should have remained. She lets the winds scour away memories of blood and bone, and she sings the fragments of what she remembers to her little golden sisters as she works among the unruly ironvine and rambling figs. They carry away her words to transmute pain into priceless honey. 

She tells herself every morning that the gold petals of the Sun’s Heart flowers in the valley are better than Hylian gold. She tells herself every afternoon that dancing in the sharp winds of her home are better than dancing with the sharp blades of warriors. She tells herself every night that the silver stars and wandering fire are better lovers than the gentle farmboy whose face she has already forgotten.

On the Night of Veils, the Elders give her a small parcel. They say it will help her with mourning. She takes it to the salvia meadows to open it in private, and stares in confusion at the strange star-embroidered mantle and frayed books. She has never seen them before, but she is ashamed to return to the Elders with her questions. These mementos must belong to someone else. The Rocs have made a mistake. 

There is no time to search for a stranger before the Veil Rites.

She takes the entire parcel to a weathered shrine at the top of her favorite little pocket canyon, where the wild indigo thrives. She petitions the Mother to remember with mercy the stranger whose things the Elders gave her, and she begs the forgiveness of an unknown ghost for not having the shape of their Name to sing. She promises the ghost of a stranger that their beloved does not need these mementos to sing upon the spiritwinds anyway, and that she will find the  _ right _ avadha to keep them before the year turns again.


	9. Chapter 9

Nialet is a month from her twenty-second birthday when Setta returns to the highlands, though she is still Varan. She is hollow-eyed and she only lifts her veils to eat. She avoids conversation with anyone, and sleeps in the barracks like a stranger. 

On the third day, Laine loses her temper at the coldness of her former lover and calls challenge on her in the courtyard in front of everyone at dawn. Everyone thought they had separated in private, but the venom on Laine’s tongue says their understanding has not matched in some time. The fight lasts all of three minutes, and ends with Laine dragged to the Ashak, and Setta pacing the eight petaled flower of the sword court, over and over, shaking with bloodrage.

At the fourth hour, Nialet overhears the Kharish gossiping that Setta has not eaten, and drank only majir the night before. There is talk she may have brought bone fever up from the south tribes, and it may be a mercy of the Mother that she treats her sisters like strangers. 

Nialet persuades a yearmate to blend a glass of Farore’s Portion, and takes it to the grieving warrior she would rather call friend. Setta accepts the food, but her eyes do not kindle with recognition. Her spirit is in such turmoil even Nialet can see it, though her spiriteyes are weak when it comes to people.

“We both know I’m the last counsel anyone could wish for when it comes to love, but I am what you have. Everyone else is starting to think you will slit their throat for wishing you good day, and Mother knows I wrestle that temptation also. My tongue often curls up even among jiradai, but my green children never mind it. Maybe your spirit will find peace in the fields also.”

Setta frowns at her. “How in hell would I know that? I don’t need your pity, avadha. I’m posted here three months, and three months I will serve. I don’t waste my time weaving friends among strangers in every godsforsaken village I’m sent to.”

Nialet frowns in turn. “Does the Law now demand that Varan disown her kin for her mourning year? What moves the High Council to burn our traditions without even sending word to our lesser tribes? Or is this your own invention, Setta avadha Varan Dorru, ilmaha Isha, ilmaha Lettu, ilmaha Roshe who was vaba to  _ both _ our amali?”

“Roshe had five daughters,” says Setta slowly. “Lettu had eight, six lived. Isha - my amali had - three seedlings lost without names? The twins to the red cough. I won my name when - when-”

“Oh,” says Nialet, startled. “No one mentioned you’d taken a headwound. Let me tell the Elders and the Ashak before they weave their judgments at least, even if you don’t like everyone to hear it.”

“I didn’t,” says Setta with a shake of her head, her eyes flaring wide, pupils pinned in panic. “ _ What have I done-? _ ”

“Winning a challenge you  _ probably _ should have refused isn’t  _ that _ bad,” begins Nialet, wishing fervently she had the talent of soothing people as well as plants.

Setta throws down her spear and seizes her shoulders. “What have I  _ done _ , that a stranger says these things? In the name of the Blessed Mother,  _ who are you? _ ”

“Someone who is going to put ickvine in your tea if you’re making a joke of me.”

Setta releases her and sinks to her knees. She draws her honor knife and lays it across her knee with one palm over the flat of the blade in the formal pattern of oathweaving, ready to die for the words on her tongue. “I swear by the Holy Sands I do not know your name nor face nor voice, but your words stir a tempest in my spirit that tastes like truth. In the name of the Mother, tell me what you know that I do not-!”

Nialet lays a gentle hand on her hair and gestures for Setta to give her the knife, even though it means she is claiming mastery over her old friend. She is afraid she will do something that cannot be unwoven. She never wanted to be responsible for anyone’s life on her own, but the gods have given her a Choice, and she will not go to the Ancestors a coward.


	10. Chapter 10

Winter is hard. This year it is not a question of barren storerooms and fretting Kharish, but a hundred terrified avadha huddled in the fortress with their sisters and their children, pretending everything is normal.

No one knows what normal actually  _ is _ . Not anymore. 

No one knows what is safe to say and what isn’t, whether it is safe to write or isn’t. Who is watching or how, or why anyone would care enough to do anything about what they see. None of them are great warriors or celebrated artisans. They are nobodies.

Nialet remembers a child yelling it as an insult.

She can’t remember where or why. Prodding the memory reveals nothing, even to the strongest spiriteyes in the tribe. All they can recover is an impression of gold and black.

Too many things do not match. Too many things are missing. Something is deeply wrong in the pattern of their lives, and the only thing they have to cling to is their faith. They cannot even cling to one another, for fear they too will suffer as Setta has suffered, as the Nameless ghost surely suffers, whose mantle Nialet keeps under her pillow.

She is no longer so sure the Rocs made a mistake after all. 

Paperwork takes time. Caravans take time. No one sends only one thing to one place in the lands of the Golden People. The final possessions of the stranger were packed and sent to the highlands before Nialet was summoned to the border. By tradition, the papers sent with such mementos are discreet - the name and clan of the recipient, the date and location the fallen one crossed the Veil. Nothing else. Nothing that can be used by one family against another, that could fuel arguments over so-and-so having more right to this or that.

Nialet petitions the Elders for leave to travel apart from the tribe after winter solstice. She needs to see the canyons around the Dragon’s Maw for herself. Setta asserts her right as a bondling to attend her master. Beytu calls in some unspecified favor that makes Eldest Mother fidget and blush. Padda and Eiju do not ask permission. They just show up in the courtyard at dawn, and refuse to acknowledge any attempt to dissuade them.


	11. Chapter 11

Nialet is glad of company when they find the bones of their lost sisters.

The warriors speak quietly of the signs they can read, and Eiju sits in the dust for hours with parchment and silverpoint to record what they have found and how they found it, in image and in cipher. Nialet moves among the stubborn sprawling life in the canyon, listening to the spirits of the plants. They have not been disturbed in several seasons, but their roots remember fire and blood.

Maybe it  _ was _ Hyrule.

Maybe it was a wild blin tribe.

Maybe it was magic.

Three days’ study does not give them any better answers. They build a crude tomb in a crevasse of the canyon wall, and move the bones to safety. They seal the chamber with blood and spirit. They swear to keep silence outside the bond they all now share. Beytu teaches them how to weave the story they will give their sisters as they turn towards home - how to measure the truth and the embroidery for a cloth that will hold water  _ just long enough _ without poisoning it.


	12. Chapter 12

Nialet is twenty-four when a familiar-looking messenger founders a horse outside the gates. She will not say anything of any substance. She is screaming for Beytu, and no amount of telling her Beytu is on outrider patrol will silence her. She is lucky to have come today and not the day before, for she is only just returned from  _ another _ rotation in the Lotus Palace currently held by the Chalut clan. Nialet climbs the eastern tower and wastes a priceless storm arrow on summoning every available hand back to their tiny fortress.

Beytu leaps from the saddle when she sees the hysterical messenger. No one understands anything - and they understand even less when the women embrace like bonded, and together fall apart weeping. No one has ever seen Beytu wail in raw grief like that before. She has always been the one ready with a morbid joke to lighten dark hours. She is the one who has always been able to laugh through her tears, to pour spirits in celebration of the lives of the fallen. Nothing anyone heard should have been enough to convey anything.

It is two days before anyone can pry sense from either one.

Nialet sits under a favorite thorny spicebean tree with a length of charred saffron velvet in her hands, studying the fragments of the pattern. The people Beytu and the messenger speak of are strangers. Some of them have Hylian names. Only distant Labrynna weaves looped velvet as a twill of wool and silk. And yet. The saffron still remembers the fierce winds of the desert. The linen thread in the seam still remembers its share in the long, slow life of a revered Sun Crown plant, and the painstaking efforts of the People to transform it.

The messenger came from the Golden Fortress straight to the highlands, even though she knew Beytu was assigned to the Lotus palace. She says the hopeless witchchild is stealing memories from their dying sisters. She says she had to escape before there was no one left to tell Beytu of The Tragedy. 

Her name is Maike avadha Davayu, and she was born somewhere in these highlands, though she is not lucid enough to name the place. She is deeply scarred from the disastrous attempt to run the easy northwest circuit without their First to lead them. 

The Sands do not choose many growthtenders outside the scattered oases. She should know all her highlands namesisters, but Maike is a stranger. 

Nialet ignores the objections of the Ashak and forces her way into the sickroom. Beytu is still mad with grief, curled like a stone around a bundle of char-stained velvet rags. Maike is not much better, but at least the sleepleaf quiets her for a while. Nothing soothes Beytu.

Nialet slaps her in frustration. It is the first time her eyes have focused on anything real in almost three days. “ _ Enough _ , avha. Your death will not unweave theirs.”

Beytu shakes her head and babbles incoherently.

“If you cannot discipline your heart, there will be _ no one _ left in this world to sing their Names,” snaps Nialet. “ _ Think _ . Remember the Dragon’s Maw. Remember the place with the lotus columns.  _ Remember the name of the child. _ ”

Beytu hiccups and moans in her efforts to control her grief, but she is frowning in confusion, and her stuttering eventually shapes the inevitable question: “Which child-?”

“I don’t know, and neither do you, but we were both there when she said it,” says Nialet. She gives Beytu the scrap of half-burned saffron velvet that is still rotten with death  _ months _ after the disaster. “Every one of these scraps is evidence of treason, but treason is  _ forgotten _ . They have tried to divide us and make us forget each other after whatever happened four years ago, but they cannot unweave what they do not know is woven. The ones who stole our memories  _ did not know _ about Hilda and Nohallen. Will you tell them now, indulging such despair as if no one else exists in the world? Will you make a present of your love to  _ monsters _ ? Will you let them defile the spirit and memory of your beloveds? That you can still remember  _ to _ mourn says you know the way of defeating their malice whether you  _ know _ you know it or not.”

“Who is  _ they- _ ?” Beytu stammers.

“I don’t know. Maybe no one does. Thank the Mother we’re  _ nobodies _ , yeah?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events referenced in this chapter - and Beytu’s character - were first explored in [Flower of Twilight](%E2%80%9C) where you might learn a little more about Hilda and Nohallen too.


	13. Chapter 13

Nialet avadha Davayu is three months shy of her twenty-fifth birthday in the year she is summoned to the Golden Fortress. Entire divisions of ilmaha are being rotated through the largest border fortress every winter, reordered, and sent back out again. No one knows for sure anymore which hidden place in the Sand Sea guards their own kinsisters and moon-bonded.

It is because of Hyrule.

It is always because of Hyrule.

The softlanders have been sending Sheikah warrior-mages across the border to hunt for hidden voe again. There is a prophecy. Again.

She is a better archer than she used to be, but the gods have not come in the night to say:  _ we gave you the wrong visions, you are meant to be Dhana, we have given your trees to someone who can actually keep them alive _ . The Rocs will not hear her objections. She scores well on circuit and on range, especially at dawn, which is the opposite of most.

Within the first week she knows who everyone means when they mutter about  _ the witchchild _ . She holds her tongue when she sees a five-year-old ilmaha in a seventh-year sword-court. And a ninth-year archery wing. And an eighth-year poetics class. The child has uncanny golden eyes exactly like the brash young Saiev on night rotations. They share the same perpetual expression of smirking defiance, even though the young one is understandably disadvantaged in every subject.

They are ilmaha Rova, and the Great Ones have decreed that  _ their _ child will not be forced to waste time repeating tasks they have already mastered  _ once _ .

They question everything, all the time. They solve knot puzzles by burning the flax. They try to win footraces with shortcuts. They interrupt lectures to needle their masters on the smallest inconsistency. They spoil whole bags of twisthorn wool spinning it too fast into a matted mess too heavy and uneven for anyone to use for anything but campaign rugs. They achieve perfect scores on the archery range not through practice, but enchantment. They steal any and every pot of sweets that isn’t glued to the floor behind three guards.

Anyone could see the Rova ask too much. The child misses the substance of every lesson because their amali demand a perfect  _ result _ , with no care whatever for method.

Nialet pretends to be oblivious and yawning for bed when she sees the stubborn witchborn child climbing over the fortress wall at dawn. Their fingers are bloody from scaling the stones without climbing harness, nor stair-key to reveal the hidden ladders, and they lay on the walk for several minutes, staring at the fading stars. They do not curse or complain in any way. When they catch their breath, they roll to their feet and slip over the inner wall in silence.

Two hours later they sit on the same bench for morning lessons as always, with the same bright defiance. Their flawlessly healed hands are folded over their knee in plain view.

It is the same the next morning, in exactly the same place on the wall.

And the morning after that.

Nialet follows the witchchild through fortress gossip. She measures their fastest climb in lessons, and trades extra cakes to switch shifts for one night, waiting to catch the witchchild before they shred their hands on the stones for half an hour for no good reason. She fails to find any sign of them whatever. Yet on her next morning shift, it is the same as always. They pull themselves up from the trap terrace and collapse in exhaustion.

No one else seems to have ever noticed them before. Not even Beytu.

She shudders to consider how terrible the cry of their spirit that at five years old they are sneaking in and out of the fortress every single night in a ragged old sandmantle and patchwork spiritmagic in absolute secrecy. What she remembers of being five centers around sweetbreads on holidays and footraces in the orchards, pretending to be a pony.

Then again, when  _ she _ was five, Hyrule was not sending assassins to murder children.

The witchchild may be claimed by the Rova, but their features suggest Chalut blood. She watches the young Saiev from that clan for any sign of connection - neither allows it in public, but Beytu confirms they’ve seen odd shadows around the windows of the Rahalin Saiev where the youngest warrior in the Legions is quartered. The rest of the clan is scattered across a hundred fortresses and estates along the edge of the Sand Sea, and their ancestral lands lay somewhere in that desolation. They are not big enough to be a tribe, yet no one wearing the name ever surrenders it to bond to another house. It is said that to love a Chalut is to despair - or remake oneself worthy of wearing the name.

Eiju says there are several ancient Kings and Chiefs with Chalut among their Names, and it is nothing but empty pride seeking preference above others for no better reason than the deeds of dusty ancestors. She admits the golden eyes are a problem in that theory, but too few records mention that sort of detail with any consistency.

A lowlands raid returns in glory. Fifty sleek horses, half young coldblood colts, half hotblood racing stock. The whole fortress celebrates - until the world turns upside down. The herds have gone mad, destroying the corrals in a frenzied stampede. The Legions muster from the feasting tables to catch them again, but they are not fast enough to prevent several breaking legs. 

_ One _ Ashak thinks to question where the frenzy began.

The Great Rova are summoned, and the Ashak who went to help with the horses are urgently called back.

Two children die that night, and the one who survives is horribly crippled.

In the morning, the witchborn child rebukes everyone but the Varan for their heartless indifference with such foul language there can be no doubt they eavesdrop on the Legion. Beytu is given the unpleasant task of confining them to lockup until their temper cools.

Nialet takes her aside after dinner to ask how the child is called.

Beytu shrugs, grimacing over bitter willowbark elixir. “Maybe we should be glad we are  _ not _ amali, when the gods send us hopeless brats like that one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The events of this chapter are referenced and/or explored in greater detail in the first, second, and fifth stories in the ongoing (but finally nearing completion???) story-cycle [ Branches and Fate ](%E2%80%9C)


	14. Chapter 14

Nialet is twenty-six, and she is slipping across the border to meet a second son of a modestly wealthy Hylian-on-paper merchant more often than she should. He is not very good in bed, but he  _ is _ generously endowed and happy to let Nialet please herself as she likes. He is funny, and kind, and he promises soon,  _ soon _ , he will ask his father for his portion of land.

Harvest is good.

The tribe has enough for the winter, and enough for tribute to the Legions, and enough to share with her neighbors. The elders ignore her minor treason with the Hylian because they know without her work, the harvests would  _ not _ be good. Every season that she is called away by one Roc or another for her lesser talents, the gardens and the wild places suffer for it. She cannot work miraculous cures on anything - she has no  _ true _ magic. Her kinsisters and namesisters understand her as warriors largely cannot. As a firewatch measures the distance between a manageable burn and a consuming disaster, so her spiriteyes protect her many green children from blights and pests, and help her balance the rationing of water and priceless compost for the good of everyone.

She wishes vainly that her talents would work on her own flesh.

This foreigner, this passive second-son, this thorn-with-legs? He is her seventh false start, even counting the Forgotten whose mantle she still keeps under her bed at home. She has thought a few times that  _ perhaps _ , finally, a seed  _ might _ have begun, but always it comes to nothing. She does not remember and cannot guess for sure whether the Forgotten brought oasis or thorn to their bed, but she believes the spirit she can almost feel during yearly Veil Rites would have been a good and kind amali, and they would have found a way.

Setta says what matters is whether the belief brings comfort. She says if it does, it is true, and if it doesn’t, it is  _ obviously _ jealous spirits gnawing at her heart. Nialet tries to heed her advice. Setta knows a great deal about grief. 

Setta is  _ also _ away at the Golden Fortress, again, even though by law a Roc should not compel a bondling against her master’s wish.

As is Beytu.

They both keep the veils of Varan, and Beytu has lost her command. Rumor has come from the south that she is disgraced, and nearly lost her head  _ and _ her Name for her failures. Her unit was ambushed on the northwest raid circuit that the Rocs had allowed to lay fallow for two years, and many young warriors were lost before they could become. The valor of the youngest of all saved the rest, and Nabooru avadha Saiev Chalut was honored with Queen’s Fangs in the same Council that condemned Beytu.

Nabooru spoke for her.

Rumor says she argued with the entire Council, and even defied the wrath of the Great Rova to demand Beytu’s pardon. Everyone is anxious for Beytu’s return, for the rest of the story. The young Nabooru is already halfway to becoming a legend at thirteen, but even legendary warriors are not immortalized by poets for being  _ kind _ . No one can begin to imagine why the brash girl would demand mercy for an old woman with no particular connections or dazzling victories, whose years of modest successes on raid circuit are clearly over.

Beytu does not come home that month.

Or the next.

Or the next after that.

The red cough is spreading from one fortress to another across the south and east - but nowhere is it worse than the Golden Fortress. The spiritwinds carry too many Names, and too many ilmaha. The Exalted orders every village and fortress to seal their doors until the fever passes, to live on whatever they have in their own storerooms, and anyone caught trading or hunting before the order is lifted will be tried for treason.

The songs of entire clans fall silent on the spiritwinds as the winter deepens.

When the Golden Fortress falls silent, the People pray.

Nialet sneaks over the walls to walk among her green children under the moonlight. She cannot  _ think _ with so many sisters crammed so close for so many days. She doesn’t understand why it feels different from the black wind or any other storm, but it does. 

The land does not offer her the quiet she hoped for. A creeping necrosis is weakening the deep roots of her trees, of the sun crown plants, of the ironvines. It is not yet enough to cause lasting harm, so long as it doesn’t advance. Her younger children with shallower roots seem healthy and oblivious.

She turns to her favorite shrine. She asks the mushrooms under the stones, and her drowsy golden sisters what they know of the sickness in the soil. She does not really expect a swift answer - the lives of her green children move differently than the patterns of the People.

She falls to her knees in awe of their cries as they open  _ their _ spiritroads to  _ her _ .

She does not need a map. She knows the rugged spirits of the wild gardens near the Golden Fortress, and the tenacity of the courtyard gardens within it. They are all in agony, but it is winter, and their deaths are largely invisible to their caretakers, and to the warriors who rely on their bounty in other seasons. Her green children show her the corruption devouring their roots. They show her the sickness in the water.

She stumbles back into her skin and raises her voice in warning and alarm. She races back to the walls, shouting for the Elders, for the Ashak.

At nadir on the fourth night after solstice, she stands in the courtyard of her home and begs the elders to bury the oasis as for the black wind, and empty every amphorae that was filled in the last month. She begs the elders to order drought rations, and she begs for leave to defy the Rocs and let her carry warning to their sisters.

Someone knocks her down, and the Ashak forces sleepleaf onto her tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plague which rises in this chapter is referenced and/or explored in greater detail in the first, second, and fifth stories in the ongoing (but finally nearing completion???) story-cycle [ Branches and Fate ](%E2%80%9C) as well as being an inciting incident - and occasional point of private conversation in [ Winds of Twilight ](%E2%80%9C).


	15. Chapter 15

Nialet is twenty-seven, and she has not forgiven the elders. 

She is not sure she ever will.

The elders did send warnings by spiritroads, but too many did not listen. The red cough decimates the Legions, but it is even worse for the weavers, the servants, the cooks, the gardeners - and the children. She cannot silence the voice that says if she had stolen a horse and gone without asking leave, elders and chiefs and Rocs in other villages would have listened. Would have known to ask the questions to learn the truths her green children gave her.

She crosses the border to seek comfort with her Hylian.

He is angry for her absence.

Her kind, soft, accommodating Hylian shouts at her that  _ she _ is the one who is poor in bed, that her body is merely tolerable, that anyone can see she is a flawed bargain. That she cannot keep a lover because she is too cold, because she is selfish, because she is  _ not _ all the things she hoped to find in him. That the jagged, graceless shape she lives in  _ might _ be forgiven if she was strong, or if she knelt to him like a proper woman, or if she would bring him glittering presents more often.

Nialet curses his father’s fields as she leaves, and she curses herself for a fool.

She vows to take no more Hylians into her body or her heart.

Her stuttering attempts to grow connections at home have all come to nothing, some with slightly less pain than others. Always, she is not enough of this or that, always the shape of one desire or another is a stone they cannot root in.

She throws herself into her work. Her green children need her, if the People will eat.


	16. Chapter 16

She is twenty-nine when the messenger comes from the south, bearing the black banner and the flower of dawn on her tongue.

The Sands have stolen away an ilmaha in the night, and given the People a fierce young prince with the dawn eight days later.

They say his Name is Ganondorf Dragmire. 

His hair is red as Din’s fires, but his skin evokes an old olive leaf rather than Her holy earth. He spins lightning in his fingers as a weaver spins wool, a lord of storms whether the Council confirms him or not. His eyes though are not yellow or brown or green or gray, but the sharpest roc’s gold anyone has ever seen.

The messenger does not say how old he is, or who his family is, but when Nialet sits down with her sisters at dinner, the meditative silence of everyone who has served in the south says the little voice inside her is right.

The witchchild is nine years old, and he wears the sun on his brow.


	17. Chapter 17

Rumor says he has slain a Moldorm Queen.

Alone.

Rumor also says he gave her fangs to  _ bokoblin chiefs _ as tokens of alliance instead of to his Exalted as rewards for valorous warriors.

Nialet does not have time for gossip. A powdery mildew has crossed the river and this time it is not just wilting thornflowers and dooming this year’s crop of rosehips. Every vining thing is sickly, and the cure is days of exhausting labor to cut and dig and burn and nurse the stumpy canes on the highest terraces in clean pots of baked soil anointed with fishhead syrup and grain dust.

Word comes from their neighbors - the mildew resists their efforts. They have not one Davayu in their village and the nearest estate cannot spare theirs.

Nialet leaves her green children to adopt more.

She forgets about gossip, until a messenger comes from the south.

He has stolen a First Saiev and her entire unit against the wish of the Exalted, for no other reason than to hunt  _ molduga _ .

Everyone raises a glass in salute to their distant, short-lived prince.


	18. Chapter 18

Prince Dragmire does  _ not _ get eaten by a molduga.

Neither does his First.

They slay not one, but a mated pair.

At the victory feast he elevates the First to Roc over the objections of the entire High Council. 

Nabooru avadha Saeiv Chalut is only sixteen. She  _ cannot _ lead a quarter of the Legions.

He says she does not need to - for he  _ also _ elevates a thirty year veteran to the rank, and reorders the army into six parts. Seven if the Elite are counted. Eight if counting his personal command of Murasa’s unhallowed legions.

Whom he summons  _ into _ the council chamber.

Rumor says he  _ laughed _ as the People fled in panic before his ghost warriors.

The High Council endeavors to teach their young prince this is not how things are done.

Nialet turns away from the worrisome rumors and keeps to her gardens, and her sisters.


	19. Chapter 19

News from the south is inescapable. Setta’s youngest ilmaha is obsessed with the glory and glamour of the distant prince. They claim they studied with him once. They claim they have always known he was made for a grand destiny. They chatter incessantly about what will become when they cross paths again and rekindle their friendship.

None of the amali at the hidden fortress can confirm whether the child is making up stories or whether it is true. They cannot remember if they ever had the questionable honor of caring for the witchchild. Eiju says the records do not show any Chalut living among their humble families, nor any ilmaha Rova within the last century.

Prince Dragmire has slain a molgera. Alone.

He has presented a plan of war to the Rocs without the support of the High Council. He demands spring raids in four different places, striking the garrisons fast and looting Hylian military storehouses. He says they will be poorly guarded at the  _ end _ of winter. He says the bright softlands soldiers will be complacent. He says the Legions can strike with their full might and  _ he _ will cover their retreat. Personally.

He is not even ten years old and the People are speculating about the royal funeral.


	20. Chapter 20

The spring campaign is a  _ brilliant _ success.

News at summer solstice says he is the same height as his favorite Roc, though  _ he _ is coltish and  _ she _ is blossoming into a statuesque warrior and  _ no one _ can defeat them in the sword courts when they dance together.

People are beginning to forget how old he is. The Dragmire of rumor sounds like a radiant and ruthless young man. He has agreed to follow the wish of the Council for once and reign as High Chief until next summer. He says he is content to stay at the Palace of Stairs, as it is convenient for hunting.


	21. Chapter 21

Nialet avadha Davayu is thirty-one, and she has two horses of her own. She has too many green children to tend across too much land held by too many tribes to manage it all afoot. Beytu rides with her more often than not, for what does their tiny walled village need with an extra Saiev of questionable honor old enough to be vaba to half of them? The elders give the old woman an old horse, and tell her to keep their Davayu out of trouble.

It is a good joke. Everyone knows Beytu  _ is _ trouble.

It is good to escape the never-ending gossip and fretting of other people. Every conversation is about raids and battles and foreign politics, or it is about the mischief of ilmaha hidden away in the west, or it is King Ganondorf Dragmire, the Flower of Dawn, Thorn of Dusk, Lord of Thunder, Master of Serpents. 

Rumor says  _ he _ says the gods will give him command of the Sands themselves within the year. His power is already immense. He weaves the winds to his will, pulling rain across the river from Hyrule and thunder down from the mountains. He has sworn before the High Council that he has shown barely a  _ tenth _ of his might, and whether he is boasting or not, everyone who has seen him work magic says he might as well be considered a third Great Rova. 

The king is  _ also _ eleven years old, even if no one likes to remember it. 

He demanded his second title from the Council when they gave him the third at solstice. He presented a chest of potions as his argument, some of them miraculous new medicines and others traditional remedies empowered with his magic. When one of the elders tried to balance praise for his work with a gentle refusal, he produced a chest of scrolls and tomes. He quoted sacred poetry to the whole council, arguing that his innovations fulfill every facet of growth as required. 

Every report from the south agrees that the council fell silent before his challenge. That  _ one _ and  _ only _ one avadha dared to speak, and she was not an elder at all, but a Ramal admitted to the chamber only to assure the comfort of her betters. She defied law and tradition, and offered tribute of blood under the traitor’s scourge that she might speak. She told him boldly that as rain alone is not enough to cover the sands in green life without seeds tucked into Din’s sweet earth, no growth potion, howsoever strong, can fill the womb of an avadha who sits alone in meditation. 

They say he laughed at her, and instead of ordering the scourge, stole her from the Council to serve  _ him _ as her punishment for her disrespect.

He then called forward  _ eight _ avadha with seedlings planted by their beloveds and quickened by his magic. Each swears that they prayed for ilmaha for many years, and the Mother remained silent until their prince in his mercy summoned them to answer a thousand questions, and drink from the magic he brewed for them in his gold and obsidian cauldrons. He sent them away to their beloveds, with orders that their elders and their commanders release them from all other duty for an entire moon.

The elders, the beloveds, the commanders were all called before the Council. Everything he claimed is found to be true. He is proud of his heresy, his defiance of tradition, his perversion of the holy texts, but it  _ is _ some comfort to know one’s avha have not in fact defiled the mysteries. 

He could have become a renowned Ashak if the Sands had not chosen him for the Trial of Eight. He often lights two green lanterns when he rests at his palace - if it can be said the young king rests at all, ever. He is ambitious and hungry, and it is said he will be the youngest and most powerful Great King ever to reign.

Nialet is  _ very _ tired of hearing about the miraculous deeds of the distant witchchild.


	22. Chapter 22

The Exalted is dead.

The spring campaign did not go quite so well this year.

The king did not even wait for the funeral pyre, let alone the retreat to the Sands or the gathering of the High Council. He invoked his right as Commander of the Sands and elevated his Exalted Sun in the middle of a battlefield, over the bodies of their enemies.

No one is surprised to hear the Name of their nineteen year old Exalted Sun is Nabooru avadha Saiev Chalut.

No one dares voice the thought they all share: it would not take much magic to  _ help _ an unlucky Hylian arrow, and he has never made a secret of his contempt for the tactics of the late Exalted. Everyone dutifully wears the purple ribbons, but few could be said to truly mourn the cruel woman who commanded absolute obedience from the Legions for five decades unchallenged.

Beytu carves the late Exalted’s Name on a bit of dead Sun Crown leaf, spits on it, and burns it to boil tea when they camp between villages that night. She does not elaborate on her hatred for the dead. She does not need to.

Nialet has seen the scars on her back.


	23. Chapter 23

Nialet is thirty-four in the spring of the gummy blight. She curses herself for overlooking the early signs as she works to heal her green children. The pumpkin harvests in the hidden valleys of many eastern canyons were weak in the fall, but some of the late harvest is always uncertain. More so when the weather is capricious. 

Now that she is hip-deep in rotting rocklily melons, she cannot unsee the pattern of the black rot she failed to notice in the pumpkins. Beytu says she is borrowing blame no one offers - a rotten pumpkin looks the same no matter what caused it, and no one can expect a mortal to be in three fields at once. Eiju writes so many copies of the blight patterns and replanting conversion tables to send to distant sisters that she can barely manage to feed herself.

Setta is no help - by order of the Exalted Sun, ilmaha over the age of eight and any amali who stay with them may return home in the winters now, provided their homes are at least a day’s ride from the border, or three days’ ride from the site of a foreign raid in the last three years. There is a great deal of work for the scribes and scholars tasked with this law-weaving and the record scrolls that must attend it, but Setta did not wait for the lawweavers. She rode west to claim her ilmaha at first word of the law, and vowed before the Mother to slit the throat of  _ anyone _ who tried to stop her.

Their village is too close to both - but they are not living  _ in _ their village. The four of them live under the stars, fighting a war with time itself. Nialet cannot begin to map how far the gummy blight has reached. She endeavors to persuade the elders everywhere what must be done, and when she walks the spiritroads she begs her namesisters to be swift and ruthless with their knives. Removing the black fruits and pruning the vines is not enough. Every shred of root and seed of every lesser gourd-kin must be pulled and burned before the blight can leap to the precious kamhia trees.

She is lucky at this villa - three namesisters live within the shelter of its oases, and the elders give her leave to do what she must, though they do not understand the work themselves. They ask what may be planted in the wake of the burn, and order raid rations for a week to free the Ramal and most of the Kharish to work beside them. Eiju helps them recalculate their storerooms and hunt down every seed that might be corrupted.

Nialet thanks the Mother for the reprieve, howsoever slender. She rises with the false dawn to prepare the scion court and select the best and strongest seedlings for her little trials. None of the bottlegourd at this estate have shown the gummy black blemishes on stem or fruit, though their roots are inflamed to a small degree. A whole tray of young hydromelon from two-year seeds seem to have sprouted cleanly in isolation, but proved weak to the corruption at once when moved to the shade court, even though the soil there has already been purified. It is distantly possible, if the two sister plants can be persuaded to bond, a small harvest  _ may _ be coddled here, for seed.

It is delicate work. It must be done before the sun climbs over the high outer wall, and her green babies must be returned to their linen-curtained healing cradles before the second hour of morning. Then, a glass of Farore’s Portion, spiced tea, and she will join the others in cleansing the outlying gardens.

A sudden deep shadow does  _ not _ help her align the cactus-needle.

“ _ Gamontirre sravoe _ ,” she snarls at the severed leaf. “Take your curiosity elsewhere before I spoil another graft.”

The shadow does not move, but clicks at her in censure, drawing breath for  _ something _ she has no interest in hearing.

“Save your wind or I promise you’ll eat sand this winter. Go away.”

The shadow laughs darkly - but moves aside. To cast darkness over her tray of needles and obsidian shards.

“What part of  _ fuck off _ do you not understand,” she says, moving the mangled rootstock aside and selecting another.

“ _ Intriguing _ ,” says a low, dark voice she has never heard before. “Spirit of a Davayu with the hands of an Ashak and a warrior’s mouth.”

Nialet freezes in the middle of pulling the next scion close.

Again, a thin breath of dark laughter.

“Vo’hei rajena,” she rasps, forcing the words off her dry tongue. That arrogance can belong to no one else in the world, though she cannot imagine why he is  _ here _ , of all places. The young king has acquired a taste for wine and revelry in addition to his thirst for hunting and war. He should by all rights be far away in his palaces engaged in  _ being _ young and stupid with freshly Named warriors or in the Golden Fortress preparing for whatever conquest he wants this year.

“To what end these weak little patchwork leaves, avadha?”

“Nothing to interest the Sun’s Ray - merely a small trial of a new pattern before the day’s work begins,” she says to her tiny green children.

“I would not ask if I was not interested,” says Ganondorf Dragmire, Flower of Dawn, Thorn of Dusk, Lord of Thunder, Master of Serpents, Commander of Sands.

Nialet sighs, and pinches the bridge of her nose as she settles back on her heels. She offers a silent prayer of thanks to the Mother that no one else is in the court to witness her walk into the King’s snare like a brainless sandrabbit. “A blight corrupts a hundred sister plants faster than we can burn them. This one seems to resist, but her fruit does not ripen until midsummer, so it may be for nothing. If even  _ twenty _ will bond with hydromelon seedlings  _ and _ resist the rot  _ and _ set fruit, this estate will have enough seed for next spring, and if  _ those _ children bear healthy fruit, the People will have hydromelons again in a few more years.”

He says nothing for a moment, nor does he move.

“O my King,” adds Nialet, weakly.

“Hn,” he says. “How many do you need to purge the rot from cucumbers also? Pumpkins? Wintermelons? Squash?”

Nialet bites her tongue on her shock. She would never have expected the warlike witchchild to know anything of the lineage of humble  _ gourds _ . “Nothing  _ purges _ the blight from the soil but fire and time. Somewhat less of the latter if the earth is turned deeply and planted with safflina and amaranth for two, maybe three years. This is merely a hope of nurturing seed that will not  _ spread _ the blight.”

“Bring me a list by zenith which things may be replanted with clean seed this deep into the season and how many barrels of each you need,” he says, and the whisper of crisp linen and muffled chatter of tiny steel rings click of boiled leather on stone says he is turning away.

Nialet scrambles to her feet, dimly registering the sweep of his creamy mantle and the bright fall of his fiery saiev-style horsetail. He is taller than she is, at  _ fourteen _ , and one uncanny roc’s gold eye slews over his shoulder to mark her movement. And her most-probably-incorrect bow. But she does not have  _ time _ to sift through dusty memories for what little she ever knew of highborn manners. “Burn the barrels to cook your dinner, Sun’s Ray, and you will have a better harvest from it than from dumping good seed in corrupt soil.”

He pauses, half-turning to pin her to the stones under his intense study. He wears the bright enameled circlet known as the Crown of Sands, a simple piece inlaid with the sacred gods’ teeth, designed to hold back stray curls and keep sweat out of the eyes. A sublime, yet functional design worn by many kings of old. His spirit gem is the largest perfect topaz cabochon she has ever seen. He wears four pairs of orange topaz earrings set in blued iron, and a heavy pectoral of polished topaz and gold in every shade of sunrise. “You said the seed harbors the rot.”

“ _ And also _ -”

“Din’s fires will purify these fields tomorrow night,” he cuts in, lifting his chin.

“Then my king must remember to burn this house with them, or everyone here will eat sand this winter,” snaps Nialet before she can stop herself.

He raises a brow, turning to face her completely. His black armor is magnificent, a triumph any artisan could boast of, despite his awkward and stringy proportions.  _ Coltish _ is the kindest word that wouldn’t stray into falsehood.

“Purity in the garden is - like sunlight, O my King. Too little  _ and _ too much of it both weave death,” she stammers, bowing her head and endeavoring not to retch from nerves. “The earth needs time  _ and _ clean offerings after such fires or she cannot nourish seeds at all.”

He says nothing.

Somewhere in the next courtyard there is a distinct  _ crunch _ . Followed by a worrisomely  _ damp  _ crunch. Followed by another. And a soft, horsey grumble.

Nialet pivots, and swears in horror. A massive black mare stands on the shattered fragments of what was once a crate of blighted cucumber vines waiting for the Kharish to feed to their ovens when they bake the day’s ration of bread. She is, predictably,  _ eating _ the rotten things entire, leaf and fruit and vine. 

Nialet sprints across the stones, shouting, but  _ of course  _ the beast ignores her. She is a  _ warmare _ , trained from the beginning of her career to disregard all manner of things which would alarm a common horse. Which is everything.

Nialet slaps her flank, swearing.

The warmare lifts her head with little more than mild curiosity.

Nialet slaps her nose, demanding she drop the whole mess.

The warmare stares down at her, still chewing her forbidden breakfast.

Behind her, King Ganondorf Dragmire  _ laughs _ . Not short and breathy and sardonic this time - no, this is the unfettered bray of pure hilarity. His mirth draws more attention from his warmare than the little human annoyance interrupting her ill-advised theft.

Nialet loses her temper. She pivots, demanding he take the four-footed demon  _ elsewhere _ at once. She lists every possible consequence of indulging the beast, in graphic detail, punctuated with obscenities she cannot help. She has already signed her own execution and exile, what is one more impiety?

Ganondorf  _ laughs _ .

He gestures to his mare, and likely weaves some magic to tug on her reins. He laughs as his warmare grumbles to herself and trudges back to the - thankfully barren - entry court.

He leans against the wall of the courtyard, and he laughs at her fury like her treason is the best joke he’s heard all year. 

He laughs at her until his kohl blurs, biting the side of his thumb with his sharp white teeth as if he thinks it will help.

Nialet runs out of wind before she runs out of fear and fury, but all she can do is stand in the dawn and gasp for breath, and be laughed at by her young witchborn king.

_ Eventually _ he tapers off into a wicked chuckle, and gestures with a little whorl to encompass everything around them. “Arrange your little patchwork leaves however you need. What must be done by hand, do it. When you have a list of what needs flame and plow and whatever else, send word by the roc I leave with you tonight. What strain of safflina and how many sacks of it do you need?”

Nialet stares at her young, mad king in baffled confusion.

“Hn. Did I stutter?  _ This _ is your assignment now, Davayu. I expect a faithful report on your patchwork melons with every full moon.”

“But you are a  _ warrior king _ ,” rasps Nialet in shock.

“Armies  _ eat _ ,” he counters with a shrug, standing upright and brushing off his armor as if he expects it has gotten dusty while he laughed at her. “Lead your sisters well, Davayu.”

Half an hour after he leaves the villa, the weight of his words finally settle in her spirit, and she startles Beytu with her swearing. 


	24. Chapter 24

Nialet waits to approach the elders. She does not know how to weave polite words for an utter absurdity. Beytu agrees it is likely he assumed she belonged to the house already, and intoned the personal  _ you _ instead of the _ kin-you  _ to tease her. He means for her to relay his orders, to reorganize the labor to most efficiently use the magic he offers. If the fields will all burn tomorrow, they do not need to cut the diseased plants to fit in bundles for the ovens, and they do not need to carry lamps to burn the flowers. It will be enough to dig the fields and leave the heap of diseased vines in the center of each. They dig firebreaks around the clean grain and the fruiting groves, and move further out than they expected to manage. 

Nialet leads them, for she can comb the foothills for signs of rot much faster than the rest. This is what he understood, with his piercing spiriteyes, that her talents in the scion court are second to her mastery of the green spiritroads. This is what he meant about leading.

At twilight they return to the villa, but there is no peace in the courts. Setta is in fury with her ilmaha, and everyone within the walls has gotten tangled in their argument. It is nine years since Nialet saw an ilmaha in a captive’s chains, and the venom of the child pierces her heart. She pushes through the crowd to demand silence of her bondling.

Setta does not heed her.

The avadha of this settlement fall quiet instead, staring at her sidelong. It is rare to the point of probably-scandalous for a humble  _ Davayu _ to keep a truly valuable captive - foreign knights, or foreign highborn, or criminals of the People. Nialet has never seen any purpose in a collar, or in announcing anything to strangers. Theirs is a different kind of bond in any case, and not the concern of anyone outside their village and kinsisters.

Beytu adds force to her demand with a fearsome drillfield bellow.

“Fuck you,” snaps Setta. “Go crawl on your belly with foreigners and stay out of it, traitor.  _ I _ am their amali, and it is my  _ right _ to weave the law.”

“It is not,” says Nialet, folding her arms and nodding toward the furious child. “Any law that leads to  _ this _ is warped and broken.”

“This ilmaha’s  _ head _ is warped and broken,” snaps Setta. Half the crowd winces. “Law exists for a  _ reason _ . Tradition exists for a  _ reason _ . I will not countenance this degenerate  _ sacrilege _ in my own-”

“Yeah-?  _ Well you don’t have to _ ,” shrieks the ilmaha. “I renounce you, I denounce you, I am ilmaha ikhusa and I  _ have _ no amali.”

“You cannot disown  _ me _ . You have no such right. I am Named of the Mother.  _ I _ brought you into this world. _ I am your law _ ,” snarls Setta, shaking her fist. “You will obey. You will stay away from him, you will not look at him, you will not listen to nor repeat word of him.”

“You can’t make me,” shrieks the child, lunging against their chains.

“Anger serves only to drain your strength and cloud your eye,” says Nialet, to them, and to the audience she had rather not have. Ever. “What harm is this child accused of that you bind them in steel?”

“ _ Nothing _ ,” snaps the child. “I follow the cry of my spirit  _ as is my right-! _ ”

“You are too young,” snaps Setta.

“I am  _ sixteen _ . I am old enough, I have  _ been _ old enough, it is only that  _ you _ are a fucking tyrant,” howls the child.

“ _ Almost _ sixteen,” counters Beytu, stalking forward to stand between mother and child. “Have the elders of our village - or this one - confirmed you are ready to seek your Name?”

“No,” they admit, sulking. “Because of  _ her _ . She’s probably sleeping with half the villages everywhere we go to buy their word.”

“Slander stings the tongue that speaks it,” says Nialet. “It is not ideal, but it has been done before, seeking the Sands without the blessing of one’s sisters to lighten one’s feet.”

Setta cries out in horror and betrayal.

“ _ However _ ,” says Nialet, lifting her chin and waiting for the child’s full attention.

“However  _ what _ ? Just because the Mother didn’t send my spirit to a Chalut amali? I wish She  _ had _ . Then maybe I wouldn’t be  _ miserable _ , tied to a miserable,  _ cowardly _ old  _ hag _ .”

Nialet waits.

The whispering of their audience quiets. Across the court, Eiju is gesturing urgently for her to stop. Setta is muttering a string of curses, her hands clenched in barely-contained rage.

“Avadha. Did you bind this child before they left the gate, or after?”

Eiju smacks her brow and moans in such agony the whole courtyard probably hears her.

One of the Varcha steps forward. “After. They were tasked to aid the Kharish with the morning meal. The smoke of their abandoned work alarmed a Ramal, and this amali foretold the direction we would find them beyond the walls. They burned the portions of eight sisters, they broke two storehouse locks and stole from the People, they stole arrows for their bow, and they stole the horses of your kinsisters to fly west.”

The ilmaha sets their jaw in defiance.

Nialet has seen that look before. She cannot understand their chaotic spirit, but she does not need to. There is only one  _ he _ in all the Sands, and Setta’s youngest child has been obsessed with the glamorous rumors from the day the black banners were first raised. “It is forbidden to speak of the Trials to one without Name, but I am the law of Setta avadha Dorru, and therefore  _ I _ am the law of this headstrong ilmaha. They who can be caught  _ going into _ the Sands are not ready to face them. The cry of your spirit longs for a Name, and every single one of your avha know this same pain, but to seek before you are ready to find is to leap without ground to land on.”

The ilmaha groans and rolls their eyes.

Setta gestures rudely.

“Avha - release them, so we can  _ maybe _ all eat before midnight,” says Nialet, rubbing at the bridge of her nose and praying she will not regret the choice her spirit demands she make. “From tomorrow morning, you train with me.”

They grumble and sulk, and look anything but grateful as the Varcha unlocks the chains.

Setta storms from the courtyard to simmer in her anger alone.

One of the elders pauses beside her to ask quietly if she is well, if she needs anything.

Nialet thanks them, and begins to say she needs only a little tea and time to think, but the words unravel half-woven, for in turning towards the elder she sees a fierce kargaroc with bright belled jesses alight on the garden wall. The bird looks at her with one eye, and then another, settling her vast black wings.

The elder turns to follow her gaze, and from her lips fall the oaths that are stuck in Nialet’s throat.

“By the  _ way _ ,” says Eiju, storming up beside her. “He  _ doesn’t _ make jokes.  _ Ever _ .”


	25. Chapter 25

Nialet sits before the crisp and elegant maps, stomach gnawing on her spine. The Kharish are roasting four whole pronghorn bucks and baking a hundred bricks of golden honey bread in celebration of their new l’vaisa. The very thought makes her ill, but at the same time she wants to stuff her face with sweet and savory and dripping grease until she can’t think anymore for the bliss of feasting.

The deer are a gift from the King.

The land rendered in crisp ink and vibrant dyes before her is a gift from the King.

_ One _ is for the People, and a convenient excuse to indulge a favorite hobby. No doubt he kept the best of his kills for his own table, as is proper.

Wherever his table happens to be.

The nearest division of the Golden Legion is half a day’s ride east, but they say he rides the very wind, consuming seven leagues in one beat of his warmare’s hooves if he likes. They say he only touches the ground because it amuses him to do it. They say he does not need to ask the Great Rova to build magic doors for him, because he weaves his own as easily as breathing.

Something about that rumor tugs at her spirit, but she cannot say why. She tells herself it is only the mind seeking distraction from the terrifying things the elders are saying. They have accepted a stranger as l’vaisa without question, and in good - if occasionally profane - humor. 

She didn’t meet the prior master when they arrived, but that is nothing unusual. Most high ranking sun-path avadha leave mundane details to the elders and stewards of the house, pouring their spirits into whatever work the Mother shaped them for. As is proper. In times of war, many houses choose warriors who have completed the pattern of their service in the Legion, but many still prefer leaders who are masters of whatever pattern the tribe weaves. Small villages like her own may not have their own master, but defer to a larger house of the same tribe. 

When necessary, the Exalted Sun or the High Chief or the Council of Eldest Mothers may choose  _ for _ the house. The king’s order is not without substantial precedent  _ in theory _ . 

It is a mistake.

He is king, but he is  _ also _ fourteen, and he spends his time among his Legion and the more powerful tribes. Her error of temper was a mirage leading his whim astray. When he learns who and what she really is from his servants, he will correct it. It may be tomorrow, or it may be in a month, or in a year if he turns his eye to treasure-seeking or war games again.

She prays fervently the mistake does not blight the lives of her sisters irreparably before he or his Exalted or  _ someone _ corrects it.

“Come now avha, these are arrangements for plantings, not funerals. It  _ is _ a lot of thinking all at once, but we only need a beginning of a sketch. Then we can  _ feast _ ,” says a younger woman from the door. She seems familiar. She is also unfairly pretty. “Details can happen tomorrow. How many pages are left?”

“Only these four,” says the elder who has led the meeting until now. “Risa is correct as usual - there is  _ some _ urgency to be ready for the cleansing flames, but we need only estimate the grain, not count every kernel.”

“You rely on  _ one _ oasis here, with no cave grottos and only three arroyo that  _ may _ flood when the mountains send their gifts,” counters Nialet, wrapping her pale mantle tighter. It is spring, but there is an edge in the night wind tonight. “Safflina needs  _ constancy _ to thrive, or the grain she gives will be thin and poor. If I do not balance it correctly, you will not have enough to trade anything at all, and the bloodlime groves here are not big enough to serve all of you for two years without a  _ lot _ of trade.”

“The word you’re looking for is  _ we _ ,” says Risa with a lopsided grin. She wears her hair pulled high and braided in one thick rope, and she wears cream striped with the rich rusty orange of a master Ashak. “Two of those arroyo  _ are _ faithful. Have been all my life. The bloodlimes shouldn’t be a problem, but it  _ would _ be best if we can sneak vegetables into the kitchen somehow.”

“I have yet to find the far border of the blight,” says Nialet with a sigh of defeat. “There may not  _ be _ any this year.”

Risa purses her lips and hums in thought. “You should send word to the Roc then, so our fighters will know the right kind of Hylian cupboard to raid when they see one.”

“Better if you do  _ not _ . For all we know, this blight could  _ come _ from Hyrule, and bringing their harvests here might unravel everything you do now.”

“We, avha.  _ We _ . The Great Ganondorf gave you to us, and we  _ fully _ intend to keep you,” says Risa with a smirk.

“He ain’t a Great King  _ yet _ ,” grumbles Beytu from her place by the window.

The elders  _ laugh _ at her sour tone.

“He conquered the four cardinal Trials younger than any king in any history we have,” says Eldest Mother with a smile. “He’s won tokens and crowns from  _ five _ Virtues. Anyone in the light of the Sun’s Ray for  _ one day _ can see he bears the seeds of the other three. It is only a matter of portioning his time to open the final Trials and formalize it.”

“Some formalities  _ are _ important,” says one of the other elders.

“Like feasting. Very important, sealing a promotion with feasting. It’s practically the best part,” says Beytu, stretching. “Hey, girl. You’ve been through the courtyards just now - the Kharish done yet or do I need to go catch myself a cucco?”

Risa laughs. “Don’t know, probably another hour, but the majir’s ready now. If l’vaisa Nialet approves.”

Nialet groans and buries her face in her hands. It is an unpardonable rudeness, but everyone else seems to think it is funny. She wishes vainly that she could turn back the day and start over.


	26. Chapter 26

The spiritwinds thrum with life at summer solstice. The king is fifteen, and word flies across the Sands that four green lanterns burn in the Palace of Fountains. They have burned for  _ days _ . By law it is his right to hold festival whenever he pleases, but Setta is right. It is one thing for him to dance with favorite warriors as young and hot-blooded as he is, but he is too young to be reviving that ancient custom. Even - and perhaps especially - on holy days.

Nialet paces the walls of the estate under the summer sunset, unsettled by the flood of vitality washing over the green spiritroads. The roots of her green children tremble and reach for it, stretching and dividing to drink ever more of it. They are ecstatic to show her the power that feeds their hunger.

She has never seen the Palace of Fountains, but everyone knows it stands over a holy spring somewhere west of the Canyon of Souls. Everyone knows it can only be reached by secret roads, hidden to the mundane eye. It suits the arrogant superiority of the Sun’s Ray perfectly. 

And. 

Her green children show her  _ exactly _ where it stands, for the power they drink under the solstice sunset flows from it.

She is almost glad Setta earned herself a night in lockup again. Her arguments with her ilmaha are worse than ever, and the child is too stubborn or too scarred by their differences to listen to her either. They are determined to become a great Saiev and win the favor of their king.

He is a warrior, and prefers the company of warriors. Everyone knows he gives his attention only to what is useful or amusing to him. He is more than sun-path. He  _ is _ the sun.

And.

He is dancing life into the earth under the green lanterns as if every tomorrow hangs on the bounty of his rain.

“It’s a marvel you don’t walk more holes in your shoes than you do,” teases Risa, waiting for her under the eighth tower as always.

“You  _ know _ council days are hard for me,” mutters Nialet, resettling the folds of her mantle so she can open her arms to the younger woman.

Risa smiles, toying with the ribbons binding the end of her braid. “I missed our afternoon tea also.”

Nialet snorts and shakes her head at the thin joke they’ve shared for almost three months. Risa is a good healer, and a good partner. Kind. Optimistic. Clever. She could have made life difficult for this stranger who took her rightful place - instead she embraced her as jiradat almost at once, glad to surrender her power to devote herself to her craft instead. 

Risa is also star-path like herself. She understands so much that others have not. She pulls her into a warm embrace, murmuring the usual smiling temptation in her ear. “How about we skip dinner?”

“I don’t think I can relax enough for that,” Nialet confesses reluctantly, lingering in Risa’s arms. “Not tonight.”

“On a holy night? Va’jiradat, of all times Farore’s daughters should celebrate together, this is one of them,” counters Risa with a charming pout. “Your gardens are doing  _ fine _ . Our people are fine. You can, in fact, afford a few hours to drink and be merry.”

Nialet winces, and pulls away. Setta’s child has tried to run thrice more since the day the king made her loatta vaisa, master of not merely two by necessity but two hundred by mistake. “Things are  _ not _ fine. What if  _ this _ happens because of my reports? The blight is bad, yes, but the grafts  _ did _ take, and the seeds  _ are _ viable. In a few years everything will be restored, and if we can persuade everyone to keep back  _ some _ grafted stock for seed in case the rot returns-”

“The we will have fresh vegetables besides erisfruit again, yes, you’ve said. Preserves are not the end of the world, jiradat, and the Legions are getting better at harvesting the good stuff from our  _ generous _ neighbors,” says Risa, touching a gentle hand to her jaw. “Much of your pride is well-earned, but this? Is too much. The Sun’s Ray does nothing without eight different reasons behind it. Even if  _ one _ is some bloodharvest spell to counter the blight, it is only that.  _ One _ . Of  _ Eight _ . Ok?”

Nialet sighs. She knows Risa is right. But Setta is also right. “It  _ would _ be nice to not think for a while. I just  _ can’t _ .”

“You  _ can _ ,” says Risa firmly. “Come. I will help. So will the King’s Tears.”

“Oh, no, I  _ never _ drink distilled-”

“Try it this once. With a little mint and almond cream. Nothing too sweet or too sharp. Just a little cathartic bite, and on to the cakes.”

Nialet’s tongue leaps ahead without her permission, as it so often does. “What kind-?” 

“Honey and walnut buttercake,” purrs Risa, tracing a fingertip down her neck in wicked taunt. “Then.  _ Maybe _ . If you work  _ really hard _ at setting down these stones you like to drag around, you’ll get some  _ honeyed cream _ .”

Nialet groans at the terrible joke and kisses her brow.

She is right. It  _ would _ be good to relax.


	27. Chapter 27

The rebellious ilmaha Dorru vanishes in the night.

Ardin avadha Eshla returns for all of four days. She argues with her mother for almost all of them. The Sands did show her one truth that she refused to hear before: she is  _ not _ a warrior, and never will be. She has neither speed nor agility nor endurance for any of it. She is made for the paths of the moon.

Unfortunately, she is  _ also _ convinced the trials and visions the spirits gave her are a promise that she will achieve her desire. She returns to her neglected music - and she once again steals her mother’s horse to ride west, following the wake of her glorious king.

Setta drinks so much her blood turns to poison.

Risa and the other Ashak work to unravel it, but it is many days of effort and anyone can see her spirit is shattered. Maybe forever.

Nialet sits before blank paper for hours, arguing with herself whether she should write, or not. Ganondorf gifted a trained kagaroc to the estate because he wanted reports on the health of the fields that feed his army, not the personal sorrows of faceless commoners. Misusing his gift might persuade him to correct his mistake sooner rather than later - which would clearly be best for the villa. But what can she even say?

Ardin is a woman under the law, and as a Named musician she has every right to leave her house and tribe to seek inspiration or share her creations. Even if that means following the Golden Legion on a hazardous late summer campaign to intercept Hylian army provisions. Drawing the king’s attention to her presence among a hundred faceless support staff might well serve the opposite end of protecting her from heartbreak.

Four nights, she argues with herself. If she waits a fifth, there is no possibility the messenger bird could reach him before Ardin reaches the Legion.

She scrawls a short query about medicines, specifically anything not already listed in Risa’s library that is woven for treating wounds of spirit, poison in the blood, or both.

He sends his answer at twilight, on the backs of four ghost warriors. It is neither letter nor note. He sends books, pots of rare mushrooms, a chest of tiny elixir vials packed in densely felted black wool, and a parcel of looted Terminan gourd-leaf green brocade. 


	28. Chapter 28

Setta recovers slowly. She wraps herself in full mourning veils and dumps every other scrap of clothing in the estate storerooms, swearing she will never need them again. She takes her place with the wall guard, choosing second and third watch whenever possible.

Nialet is almost certain she does it in rebuke of her master. She makes no great secret of her opinion that she was too soft, that she did not do enough to curb a wayward ilmaha, that her judgment is corrupted by the touch of the king’s favor, howsoever small.

Rumor comes with the first caravan of spoils from the east. Ardin has gone before the king with her komuz, and petitioned him to sharpen her music as critic and muse in one.

Beytu hits Setta from behind while the caravan master is still talking. The visitors all fall silent, but everyone who has come to know Setta over two seasons understands at once why Beytu is calmly dragging the unconscious woman to the nearest ironwood arbor post and binding her there. A few of the other Saiev help.

It is said the king accepted Ardin’s petition.

It is very carefully  _ not _ said the king has taken her as a lover.

They are close in age. They are both passionate spirits. Their youths have both touched more tragedy than is just. The one worships the other, and that other likes  _ being _ worshiped. 

Who doesn’t?

Nialet quietly asks the gods and spirits to soften Setta’s heart, and let the bond be a happy one.


	29. Chapter 29

Two busy months pass. The safflina and amaranth all ripen at once, and every hand in the estate down to the youngest ilmaha - who is ten, bleeding worrisomely early, and may not be ilmaha much longer - labors in the fields from false dawn until the last scrap of sunlight fades. Everyone is heartily sick of eating storm rations except on holidays. Nialet quietly arranges with the Kharish to have majir mixed a third stronger, and to offer chiba with evening meals until harvest is finished.

In the middle of this, word comes through the Roc of the North that the legions are reordered. Lists have already been drawn up, and the Exalted Sun will be taking a personal interest in the obedience of the villages and estates in their part of the country. It is said some have cheated the Legion of their tribute, and some have held back their best to guard their own storehouses before their sisters’. The law exempting bondlings from service is burned by order of the king. He says review of records shows patterns of cowardly evasion by way of conveniently timed bondings or hasty ‘corrections’ to tribal records to claim softland heritage. 

Any master who disputes the assignment of her bondling may petition to have her service returned - provided she petition in person.

Nialet shouts a great deal of treason at her green children that night.

Setta avadha Varan is to guard the Serpent Palace over the winter.


	30. Chapter 30

Nialet is thirty-five, and winter is both sharp and long in tooth. The ice on the stones every morning should have stopped weeks ago. She continues to shelter her green children under waxed linen veils in densely planted shelves in every courtyard of the estate. It is a minor boon of being l’vaisa that she can persuade her sisters to do  _ many _ things her own village would have laughed at.

Their new banners snap merrily in the frigid wind above the eight freshly lime-washed towers: green life and pure light and the holy rust-red earth. Some of the avadha are wagering on whether she or Risa will propose the lifebond first, but she cannot dissuade them because she is not supposed to know. 

Beytu avadha Saeiv never met a rumor she could resist.

It is not that Risa is not wonderful - she is. They are good friends, and fortune willing, always will be. They still indulge each other in amusement from time to time, when their duties allow, but the early kindling has mellowed already before a full year has even turned.

Nialet is not surprised.

Risa is twenty-nine, and still young enough to be a little disappointed the kindling did  _ not _ become a flame. She has never felt that flowering other women speak of either, and there is a certain comfort in sharing a life with someone who understands that. She brought the idea of lifebond into conversation first, and by the mercy of the gods, also was the first to say it doesn’t feel like the right path for who they are. At least not now. Who is to say what tomorrow may become?

Nialet expected their friendship would change, after that. It always did before.

It is good to be va’jiradat.

She still wishes she could be amali also.

She is afraid to confess it to Risa. She doesn’t want the younger woman to think she asks her to bear. She knows well the woman’s fear of it. She is Ashak. She knows more than anyone how harrowing the battle can be. She knows it will only be harder for Nialet, and  _ her _ season for growing new life is running short. Risa is noble and generous - she would be too likely to persuade herself through her fear and offer herself as vessel for a seedling. She is too likely to go behind her back and seek a friendly thorn to make it become if she even  _ guessed _ the shape of Nialet’s desire.

Setta writes often. Sometimes daily.

The letters do not  _ arrive _ daily - a week’s worth of correspondence and lightweight, timeless provisions come across the Sands from the Palace and other places on strange spinning chariots. The Legions have labored for months to lay thin toothed wires under miles and miles of earth, and somehow his magic chariots follow them, bearing a single skymetal chest each. They move mindlessly in the sunlight from one end of the buried wires to the other, sinking down at night wherever they happen to be. Outriders for every fortress are to watch the nearest end of these enchanted wires, and be ready to collect and refill the chests at any time one rests overnight in their reach.

It is a new innovation of their young king, who seems to have a habit of inventing things when he is bored. His perpetual hunt for powerful artifacts of the ancients does not bring him what he wants, and the Trial of the Eight has not yielded the last three tokens he craves. He has forged a series of enchanted chains, weaker and stronger, aesthetic and functional, all in different metals with different locking mechanisms and hinge arrangements. He is not satisfied with any of his creations. He soon abandons the work to dabble in the arts of the armorsmith instead.

Setta writes that he never sleeps. He is in the sword court or he is hunting or he is in one of his many workrooms. He is with the Council or the Great Rova or his many petitioners. Even in the middle of the night, when his petitioners are clearly unconscious from wine or exhaustion or both, the king may be seen pacing the walls or the highest tower, watching the stars or weaving his own dark, haunting music.

Setta does not write of Ardin, not by name.

She would hate to hear it, but she is as obsessed with the king as her daughter, in opposite directions. Nialet aches for her pain, but she does not know how to soothe it. 

Somewhere between the wondrous rumors and Setta’s contempt walks the real, tangible Ganondorf. Nialet begins to think no one truly knows his motivations at all, possibly not even himself. All the fragmented reflections taken together are like a little wastelands tempest, its center dancing so wildly you cannot know its next move at all. You can only escape such hazards by knowing the truth under the mirage - though over small distances they are unfathomable, across a furlong or more the sand tempests always follow the strongest wind.


	31. Chapter 31

Spring comes at last, and with it, fearsome and erratic flooding. Nialet is intensely grateful for the courtyard nurseries - when the melted mountain snows have finally tumbled into the Thundering River, her sisters will be ready to plant. Late, but far better than never. After the harsh winter, her green children will be eager to gorge themselves on spring sunlight and open land, and in a few weeks her golden sisters will come down from the highlands to get drunk on the bounty of blossoms she offers.

Many of their neighbors are begging for a share of their seedlings. They did not listen to the howling of the hungry winter wind, and their seeds are either rotting in the earth or washed away by the floodwaters.

Nialet sends them each one crate, and one of the other Davayu to teach them what to do with it, and how to coddle more seedlings in their courtyards for a second, later harvest. The years have not softened her as her amali and vaba always said. She knows her voice cuts too easily, and the People will close their ears. It is better to weave a sheath for the blade of her spirit, and remain among her green children.

Eight bright warriors race across the muddy ground under the black and gold banner of the eight-rayed Sun Crown. She meets them at the gate in the hour of madness to offer the hospitality of the estate as is proper. They accept with unfettered gratitude, and over tea and fresh wintermelon with salted paper-thin venison they share the glorious news.

The Great Ganondorf has returned from the Trial of the Eight with the golden Crown of Ancestors and the jade-mounted stag’s head spirit gem described in myth as the Crown of Ages. It is, apparently,  _ not _ bloodamber as scholars have long speculated, but topaz. They say he stood upon the altar in the heart of the palace and opened the spiritroads as he crowned himself a War King on equinox. None of them noticed his song, for they have been in a constant frenzy of labor dealing with the flood and the mudslides and the transplanting, but Ganondorf has claimed the eighth and final wind.

He is a Great King.

At fifteen.


	32. Chapter 32

It is the fourth hour of midnight when the enchanted War Bells clamour and every lantern in the estate flares blood red.

Something terrible has happened.

The spiritroads are mired in some enchanted darkness, isolating every settlement from one another. Even the spirits of her beloved green children cry out into a consuming silence. The sky boils, and at dawn a wall of black wind stains the western horizon.

Nialet races the wind alone, arrowing toward the nearest garrison under twin banners: the sacred cloth for peace, and the colors of her house. They do not open the gate, but the Rahalin Dhana comes to the wall to tell her they know nothing she does not, except that she is not the only one to defy the red lanterns to ask.

War is upon them in pure fury, and no one knows where or how or why. It could be anything. The enemy could be in any direction at all. With the unholy darkness smothering the spiritroads and a ravening black wind so close on the heels of the spring floods, the only thing anyone can be sure of is death at their gates.


	33. Chapter 33

The storm rages for four days.

Everything stops with a terrible sudden silence, as if the eye of the tempest has settled overhead. Nialet climbs to the highest terrace of the central tower and unbars one and only one ventilation shaft. The dawn is mercilessly blue-white, and everywhere the scouring sands lay at least a hand deep.

The lanterns are still red. The spiritroads remain endarkened. The clever spinning chariots lay broken and pitted, their cargo destroyed or whisked away in the terrible winds. Nothing moves anywhere on the horizon. Even the wind sits still.

Four times she turns the hourglass, and the world remains silent.

Nialet asks her sisters if any will help her save however many green children they can.

All of them rise, even to the Saiev and the Varan, and their one precious eleven-year-old ilmaha. Under blood-red war lanterns, they open the gates.


	34. Chapter 34

On the eighth day of War, the darkness lifts from the spiritroads. The lanterns remain red, but at least the strong Voices can reach one another again, scrambling to weave any kind of pattern from the chaos. 

The damage to the spring plantings is much the same everywhere, a quarter of what lived before the storm is gone, another quarter is greatly damaged but  _ may _ be coaxed to survive. The Great Ganondorf has stripped every able warrior from every fortress in the center of the country and a broad swath reaching all the way to the Golden Fortress above the Great Bridge. No one knows  _ why _ , only that in the middle of the night the Great King abandoned the careful plans he was weaving with the Rocs and High Council to ride east into Hyrule. The remaining provincial Rocs are summoned to cross the river by week’s end to join the advance.

Hyrule is burning.

They were not expecting an attack in the middle of the snowmelt flooding, and Ganondorf Dragmire is trampling the softlanders into their own fields. It is not a raid this time. He raises the sword of conquest, and he wears the War Crown.

The Exalted Sun rides with him.

No one knows any more than that.

Who can understand a Great King?

Nialet summons the house to hear what she has learned. She lays before them the choice. 

They can remain behind walls, braced for foreign retaliation and on edge to answer further orders, eating from the storehouses and letting the green children live as wild things. 

They can return to their work as usual, albeit with swords at their sides, in defiance of the red lanterns.

Risa suggests a rotation. Half remain on and within the walls, drilling for combat. Half return to their work with whatever weapon suits their hand best. Every day they switch.

Beytu suggests four day rotations.

Eiju suggests three shifts, staggered.

Nialet asks if they are all agreed to rotate through something like normal, willing to adjust the pattern until the dance is smooth.

_ Va’hei l’vaisa,  _ they all cry.


	35. Chapter 35

Nialet avadha Davayu is thirty-six, and she is l’vaisa of a thriving farming estate in the middle of a terrible war. Three of those four things are aconite on her tongue.

The Legions have not come home, nor the war lanterns dimmed. Not even a little. Not even in the middle of winter, when Hyrule snows. The Geld’o have taken tens of thousands of hectares of marshland and pastureland, garrisons and manors and villages. Ghost warriors bring spoils across the Thundering River and drop them outside the closest fortress. Much of it is food, as always, but this year the Legions have taken  _ literally _ anything they could lift. Commonborn Hylians who bow to the Great Ganondorf live under the rule of Geld’o Firsts in every precinct, who in turn answer to eight Rocs. The Exalted Sun governs the southeastern advance, the Great Ganondorf himself leads the northeastern advance.

The Golden Legion is consuming south Hyrule faster than she can muster knights to oppose them. No one knows how many have died, on either side, or why the Great King pivoted when he did, exchanging his precise lightning tactics for wildfire wrath.

People are beginning to whisper about demons.

A small detachment of older warriors come one evening under the banner of peace, and the banner of the Exalted Sun. By order of the Exalted, they are assigned to strengthen the guard of the estate until further notice. They say theirs is not a special case, that the Exalted has been parceling out and redistributing veteran warriors for months as the cream of the Legions push east into the soft green lands once claimed by Hyrule.

One of the purple veils carries a small gilded box, and her eyes are empty. Setta is so changed by a year of service that Nialet does not know her until she speaks the part of the ritual salute that honors their distant king. She invokes not  _ glory for the great king of the golden people of the holy sands _ as the others do, but simply:  _ Great Ganondorf, Flower of Dawn, flowering of our hope.  _

Vo’chalut surai, rajena va’chalut.

_ Rajenaya Chalut. _


	36. Chapter 36

On equinox, the war lanterns flare, and the enchanted flames become an unsettling tumble of red and green, each flame twisting through the colors in a strange helix.

It is a profanation of the sacred custom to invoke those holy mysteries without full purification rites, and war is by  _ definition _ impure. The war banners remain raised, and yet the Great King has decreed Festival. In some villages and fortresses, no doubt the People embrace the first breath of revelry since the eastward advance. Not so within their estate, or at least anyone who does keeps it quiet and behind a closed door. She did not need to persuade them - Risa’s profanity and retreat into private reflected her own silent unease, and the elders took from that what should be said. Every one of the elder mothers is better at weaving words than she is, and she finds herself wondering, as she prunes the weak buds from the corridor of espaliered witch hazel, why none of  _ them _ lead the house. Why they defer to her in anything, when she is named l’vaisa only on the whim of a youth who doesn’t know better.

It is of course pleasant to be indulged in one’s whims sometimes - the witch hazel is one such case: though still useful, it is neither food nor an  _ essential _ medicine, and one or two would be enough to keep the stillrooms stocked. It often needs coddling through the summer, and in a true drought she would never hesitate to cut them out entirely. 

She keeps them in her little walled apricot grove under the east face of the central building because they are  _ pretty _ .

She planted them when she brought apricots down from the highlands because she hoped they would help  _ her _ root in this land. It is not that she  _ misses _ the village of her foremothers. It is not even that her spirit yearns for her old rambling wild gardens and terraces in a way that cannot be answered with visiting. Everyone seems to think she’s settled in nicely, as if the whim and hand of the Great King merely fulfilled some design of the Mother of Sands. 

She does take pride in her place in their pattern, in her contributions to their victories. She has grown to love many of her sisters. Two years is more than long enough to sink a taproot into the hidden lifewaters of any place.

And yet.

Working among her beloved green children still feels like something stolen.

After the holiday passes, the spiritwinds hum with speculation and expectation. The King will return. Surely. No later than solstice. His conquests are glorious - the People hold enough of the green land east of the Thundering River to have modest moon feasts despite the war banners, and the storerooms are more full than anyone can remember them. They do not need another long year of campaign. The Legions do not  _ need _ to raid - tribute is flowing west, and they have improved upon captured defenses to keep what they have taken.

The Lord of Storms can bring his rain home.

He chooses instead to take cultivated timberland in the southeast, and expand his grasp on the rolling horse country of the northwest. To their province, he sends heavy farmhorses, bundled rootstock from hundreds of foreign specimen plants, and entire herds of dairy goats. 

Many villages bring her things they don’t know how to grow.

The elders agree to build a new west courtyard beyond the main walls where these green war orphans can be nursed and studied.

And still, her roots feel loose in the soil of her given home.

She tells herself it is only her share in Setta’s grief over Ardin’s death. She has not offered details, and Nialet cannot bear to press her on it. 

She tells herself that it is the challenge of leading so many disparate spirits, of  _ not knowing _ the right path and still needing to choose. It is different than simply not knowing how a choice will flower, and she is still getting used to that.

She tells herself it is her hopeless longing for a child, for a family, that pours sinksand under her feet. That when the cycles of bleeding cease, it will be easier.

Beytu was never amali, but as they drink chiba together in a rare spring rain, she cautions her not to count on it. She says desire does not listen to will nor flesh. She offers to circulate word among her old warrior friends, to pull threads until they can find a moonlight thorn who might suit her. She also offers to be the meddlesome auntie for the young lovers in the estate, and maybe her l’vaisa will have a  _ legion _ of babies to spoil next winter.

Nialet reluctantly agrees to consider it.

Any amali with infant ilmaha will be sent to safety in the west as soon as the Rocs hear of it. Her sisters will not bring her babies to spoil in winter, but  _ may _ bring little vure to love and guide in  _ eight _ winters.  _ Maybe _ . If the war ever ends.

By then it will surely be too late to bear her own.


	37. Chapter 37

Nialet is walking in the regimented, low-walled ‘Foreigner’s Court’ in the ash-gray light of almost-dawn, drinking her spiced tea in something like peace. This of course means her solitude is shattered by a piercing, ulating cry from the eastern towers. She sighs as the alert ripples along the walls, leaping to every tower, and braces for the blare of brass horns.

Sight of an enemy would rouse the drums, and a wholly different kind of cry.

This is arguably worse - someone  _ important _ .

No warning has come from the Rocs or other Voices. Like as not it is some surprise inspection of their storerooms, records, the tribute they’ve set aside for the Legions, and the warriors they’ve kept back from them. The lawweavers and arrogant Firsts have come before. Always it is the same. They scowl and bark and feast for four days as they work, and then they leave again.

Except - the horns don’t stop.

Over and over, their gaudy clamour shreds the glory of sunrise.

“Someone’s  _ very _ convinced of her importance,” grumbles Nialet, draining her tea. She will not get to enjoy any of breakfast now, and there is no further reason to linger. The foreign green children are getting on as well as anyone could expect. None are so well-established that she can determine a proper use of them. None of that will change in a few hours, or even a few days, even at the edge of summer.

“They’re  _ in _ the  _ oasis _ ,” cries one of the young Dhana over the noisy horns as she climbs the wall. She is fidgeting at such speed and with such anxious excitement she reminds her of an overcharged pleasurestone left on a table. “Full purification rites - oh l’vaisa you  _ gotta _ see this.”

Nialet chuckles, and gestures for her bow. “I’ve seen plenty of tits, girl. Go on, enjoy your youth.”

The girl gratefully pulls her duty veils off, swooning and on the edge of squealing in profoundly undignified delight. “Mother of Sands be praised, it’s  _ not _ just good tits today l’vaisa - I mean, not that these Saiev aren’t  _ unf _ , because  _ blessed sands _ they are  _ something _ to behold but - the  _ thorns _ on these warriors-”

“Hurry then, and get your best face on before they’re through Nayru’s Flame. That sort are especially fond of the moon’s charms,” she says with a smirk, shooing the girl off to lust after the strangers  _ somewhere else _ . Even at eighteen, even when she nursed the odd crush for someone beautiful, she was never one for silly-headed swooning. Plenty of her sisters were - and they were never so isolated from other settlements when they were young. The little wars and the raiding back and forth was something that happened far away and to other people in those days. She doesn’t  _ mind _ the girl’s excitement - youth is its own Trial, really. She just needs time to soothe the irritation of interruption. She needs time to be ready to greet the strangers.

Nialet confirms the order to reduce watch to sixteen for an hour, and for a unit of Saiev to meet the strangers at the oasis with guest-clothes for formal welcome. She returns the bow to the armory, and climbs to her own room on the east side of the towering central building. She is slipping into better sirwal when someone strikes the great drums.

The horns fall silent.

She hesitates, heart in her throat as the deep, primal booming above resonates through the stones. What if they were wrong? What if it is the enemy in disguise? What if they have opened the gates to Death?

A single horn cries the opening notes of the First Hymn.

“ _ Gamontirre draigh ikhusa _ ,” she snarls, stepping out of the sirwal again and hurling them across the room. Mustard and indigo pinstripes on tan linen is not good enough for the king.

She empties half her wardrobe on the floor, scrambling for anything that comes close to the definition of ‘best’ for someone highborn. The only silks she owns are mourning sirwal and plain cream for under her woollens in winter. The green inks on her holiday linens are badly faded, as greens so often are. The best she can manage is woad-over-goldenrod brushed wool. It is woven for the night wind and winter holidays. Just looking at it makes her feel overheated.

It can’t be helped. 

She wraps herself in a plain cream silk bandeau meant as an underlayer, and hides it under hastily pleated Terminan brocade. She’s pressed it into service as a coverlet before, but never as a mantle. It feels ridiculously showy, but it is arguably the finest cloth she owns.

She remembers as she winds a goldenrod linen girdle around her hips to hold the pleats down that it is  _ also _ a gift from the King.

The hymn has passed from horn to komuz - there is no time to find something else.

Nialet flies down the stairs, and still she doesn’t reach the main door until the Hymn is winding to a close. The Great Ganondorf sits astride a beautiful black warmare, adorned with black linen and more topaz than she’s ever seen in one place in her life. He raises his fist and cries the ritual salute -  _ hail to my sisters. _

The answer to his call fills the entry court.  _ Hail to the Great Ganondorf _ .

He wears the War Crown well. The spiked solar disk which in holy texts seems ridiculously enormous is perfectly suited to anchoring his sodden mass of red hair in a fat upswept twist. A few stray marigold petals cling to his hair and clothes, but he hasn’t noticed.  _ Hail to the flowers of the Holy Sands _ .

Nialet finally schools her breath enough to join their cry.  _ Hail to the glory of the Golden People. _

He raises his open hands, and his warmare picks up her massive feathered hooves in a perfect parade-ground pivot.  _ Glory to my sisters of the holy sands, you who flourish - how do you greet your Lord King, your hope? _

Nialet stumbles over the final salute, for her spirit has turned the sacred poetry into a babbling recitation of the name they were all made to forget some sixteen years ago. 

_ Glory to the hope of the Golden People, we greet the Great Ganondorf Dragmire, flower of the sands. _

He gestures for song, and her sisters gladly obey as he dismounts. He rolls his neck and shoulders, but that is his only concession to what was surely a punishing ride through the night. The nearest fortress east of them is one of the new captured garrisons across the border. He might have come from the north, but even that is three days’ journey. Unless he used magic. Which, given the rumors, is probably the case.

Nialet cannot quite make her tongue manage the Hymn. She is trying to remember what is supposed to come next. When he surprised them before, he traveled alone, and stole through the gates without ceremony. She never did learn his original purpose, and beyond some cheering and singing over breakfast, it was a scrambling effort to honor his visit before he left again.

This time, it seems he might stay, at least to rest his horse and escorts - the latter are clustered by the gates, dismounting from  _ their _ horses with groans and grateful stretches.  _ They _ are human enough to admit to a little weakness, however highborn they might be. The young Dhana only mentioned Saiev, but he has a Ramal and a Kharish along with his Elite warriors with their great black claymores, his archers and his fireflower lancers.

“I hope he’s planning on hunting again,” she mutters to herself. Feeding so many high ranking warriors will call for a great deal more fresh meat than they have.

“There’s not much  _ to _ hunt in this weather,” says Eiju from the door. “Where’s the tribute pl- oh, thank the Mother, Farou assembled it.”

Nialet turns to follow her gesture. One of the younger Kharish stands on the middle step of the entry stair with a wide silver dish cluttered with small things - what looks like foodstuff, and a tiny gilded cup, with a heap of some smouldering incense at one edge. She can’t identify any of it. “Am I supposed to do something with that-? Where’s Risa? She would know.”

“Haven’t seen her today, and not sure. The  **_Book of the King_ ** only says to offer it at least four steps from the door.”

“Say anything else useful-?” Nialet hisses urgently - they are singing the last phrase and she is almost out of time.

The scholar shrugs and claps a hand on her shoulder once, then steps down to join the general crowd of their sisters.

Nialet stands alone before the great doors as the music falls away. 

The Great Ganondorf is striding toward her, his golden eyes roving over the crowd, consuming them all. His lips twist faintly in a shadow of a wry grin. He is still carved of sharp edges and angles, but in two years he has layered a little more wiry muscle on his bones, and he moves with the tireless grace of perfect confidence. His voice has dropped even lower, and the faint burr has turned into a rumble like distant thunder. “Avadha.”

The Kharish offers her silver tray with a stammering  _ vo’hei _ .

He tips his head as he climbs to stand beside the poor girl. He looks down his long nose at her with unreadable intensity, like their kagaroc deciding whether a new offering is a toy, a snack, or an offense to her dignity. “You are not the master of this house.”

“ _ Fuck _ ,” whispers Nialet to no one in particular.

“This house and all who live in it bow to the Sun’s Ray,” stammers the Kharish.

“ _ That _ is not what I asked,” he says softly, taking the tiny golden cup from the tray. He studies her for two more beats. He raises his golden eyes to pin Nialet to the stones, and climbs two more steps.

“Savai O va’Rajena,” says Nialet with a cough. “We did not know to expect you.”

“No one does,” he returns with a sardonic smirk. “Even so. The song of this house pleases me. Tell me one of these avadha knows the mystery of making gant’shakroth, and I shall be still more pleased. Add chiba and roast lamb with pickled melon, and I might promote you.”

“Once is plenty,” says Nialet before her mind can catch up to her own folly. “Does my king desire to eat in the hall or a courtyard or-?”

“Wherever is possessed of decent cushions,” he cuts in, lifting the little golden cup to his lips. He tips his head, studying her. “At the third hour you may light  _ one _ blue lantern, at the fourth, you may light a second. Have eight rooms prepared as for Rahalin, that my warriors may rest. They will eat with the rest of the house.  _ I _ will eat  _ now _ .”

“Then perhaps my king will prefer to have a shaded corner of the Kharish court prepared for him,” she says, tipping her chin in the direction of the main kitchens.

“Hn,” is all he says, but he gestures with the empty cup.

She leads him through the first floor of the main building to buy the Kharish a  _ little _ more time to prepare the beginnings of a lavish royal breakfast. He does not ask questions about the rooms or their ornaments, and she does not offer anything about them. She silently curses Risa for vanishing exactly when she needed her most.

She breathes a prayer of thanks to find the Ramal have managed to arrange an entire couch and mountain of mismatched cushions in a canopied section of the court usually set aside for blending delicate sauces. The Kharish are hurrying in every direction, but already they have assembled a tray of sliced voltfruit and pickled pinpad and savory olives.

Ganondorf says nothing about any of it. He moves directly to the little couch, but he does not sink into the cushions he demanded. He perches on the edge as though he will rise again in the next breath. He watches the bustle of servants and cooks, and waits. He seems to have forgotten Nialet is there at all - so when they bring him fresh chiba, she retreats into the shadows of the house, and from there to her own room where she can curse behind a safely barred door.


	38. Chapter 38

One single solitary hour is better than none, but it is not much.

Risa doesn’t bother picking the lock on the door, but crawls through the window, cursing. She is  _ not _ in her finest clothes - she is barely even dressed at all in plain bandeau and hip wrap. She wears no jewelry beyond her spirit gem and the brass pins securing the coil of her braid atop her head. She trips over the tangles of cloth all over the floor from Nialet’s scrambling efforts to be presentable. “The hell happened in here? Ghosts? If you’re hiding from a headache, drink some willowroot and get over yourself. We don’t have  _ time _ for this.”

“No potion of yours can fix it,” Nialet groans. “Where the hell were you during the damn ceremony and how badly did I fuck up?”

“Trying to fix the problem we’re about to have,” she snaps, hauling at her arm to force her to rise. “I was  _ in _ the oasis when Himself thundered up, and it was  _ not _ easy slipping past all of them to sprint back here. The state rooms haven’t been used in a few months, but the dust is the smallest of our worries. We need you in the storerooms an hour ago l’vaisa.”

It is never a good sign when Risa uses her title. “I have trays in the north storerooms for moving the seedling mats - six should be enough to empty the bath. I’ll pull the Ramal from the kitchen courts-”

“Won’t be enough. Everything is a disaster,” she moans. “What did he say of his plans? I saw the Rahalin moving things around. He needs to be busy until _ at least  _ afternoon.”

“He will hear petitions at the fourth hour, but beyond that,” Nialet shrugs, debating whether to keep or exchange the makeshift brocade mantle.

Risa swears, unbolting the door. “Come on - let me grab clothes on the way but - this is terrible. We only have  _ two _ black banners - the other six became moth food sometime in the last two years and none of the Ramal noticed. I have them refashioning what’s left of the ruined ones into a cushion even though it’s crap wool. We only had  _ one _ of proper black silk. One! How could we be caught so flat-?”

“Because we’re nobodies,” grumbles Nialet, following her around the inner hall and down the central stair. “The elders asked about trading for black vicuña right before the War Lanterns happened, and we  _ did _ acquire some charcoal twisthorn locks but they’ve only been scoured and readied for the dyepot. It wasn’t a priority. We don’t even have a full suite, just those two rooms at the end of the west inner crescent. Why would he come  _ here _ for anything more than watering his horse _ - _ ?”

Risa swears as she ducks into her own room - which is soon in an equal state of chaos as she digs through  _ her _ wardrobe. “Why does the Sun’s Ray do anything? He wanted rooms for his Elite, so he’s definitely staying overnight this time. Which is an even  _ bigger _ problem. The public room is bad enough with mismatched cushions and terrible yellow rugs, but the bedroom is worse. The shutters are in good condition, but nothing else is.”

“The first part is easy - sort the blue aside and arrange the rest as the seat under blueish blankets. Maybe it’s  _ not _ royal, but it matches the lanterns he asked for. Can we take the woad-and-goldenrod striped kilim from the elders’ hall for the center of the room? Bridge the colors a little, and anchor the sofas.”

“It’s still a million leagues from proper, but you’re right, it’s less patchwork. If we cut down to two sofas, we should have enough blue silk cushions to make it work, but the blankets are all going to be twisthorn unless you can talk a Kharish into surrendering her best?”

“Wouldn’t be clean and dry in time anyway. If he decides to sit without pants, his itching is not my problem,” she counters, helping Risa get her mantle pinned.

Risa giggles nervously. “I hope for your sake he’s too busy with breakfast to overlisten your irreverence. Ok, where can we take the baby seedlings  _ to _ ? Will they be ok in the scion court for a few hours?”

“Too bright. Library floor. Eiju owes me after this morning’s horseshit, and we won’t have anything of interest to any highborn.”

Risa winces, wagering a month of desserts Eiju will throw a fit about it as soon as the King is gone. She leads the way down to the common rooms where a handful of elders and weavers and spinners and their sisters are clearing away the remnants of their half-begun work to open and make the ground floor ready for petitions as they would for dinner. Her green cushion and Risa’s orange one remain in the basket on the landing. The black silk cushion lays near the edge. The elegant, footed ebony tray they’ve used but once before stands beside it, laden already with a gold-banded black ewer and cup, along with a tiny silver box of gant’shakroth saved from equinox.

It is nothing approaching luxury. Even remote, humble estates like theirs keep  _ some _ supplies for the chance of their king resting his horse at their home for an afternoon. A few beds of Din’s Marigolds - now stripped of blooms - in the entry court, banners for his Virtues, tableware and small comforts. 

Theirs fit in a single carved spicewood chest in the state room. 

The highest person they’ve ever entertained besides the king’s brief visit two years ago was the Eighth Roc. She is an older Dhana, and traveled with her Davayu partner. Adorning the rooms for  _ them _ had not presented any great challenge - everyone was happy to lend their best festival mantles and shawls.

It is too late to remedy her failure to anticipate her King, and too early to indulge in regret. 

She finds plenty of wind for swearing when they empty the last seedling mats and shelves from the tiled bath. A terrible crack cuts down one wall and straight across three-fourths of the floor. The room below is all sealed pots of dyestuff, mordants, and clean wool. Nothing that couldn’t be salvaged from a leak - but repairs to the building  _ after _ such a flood would take weeks of labor they can’t yet spare. 

“Lady have mercy, if it crumbles with him in it, we’re  _ dead _ ,” moans Risa, tearing at her hair. She keeps touching the deep fissures as if her minor talents to mend flesh and bone can make the stone heal too.

“We’ll think of something. Do we still have that stash of copper ingots or did we trade it?”

Risa opens her mouth to answer.

One of the Ramal screams.

Everyone races to the public room, where a pair of wooly spiders - each the size of an eating bowl - are skittering in mad zigzags across the rugs. The venom of an adult is usually slow, and they always keep plenty of counter-venom in the storerooms, but one of the pair is broad and brightly banded where the other is leggy and dark.

If they had time to mate, there will be  _ legions _ of eggs, and the amali will be justly ferocious in defending her den. 

They waste fifteen minutes chasing and executing the creatures - and Risa gets bitten also. She shoos the Ramal ahead of her to the sickroom, hanging back to deliver the other piece of bad news she  _ somehow _ forgot to mention before: one of the storehouse cats made a nest under the center of the sleeping platform, well out of reach.

It is the third hour, the bed linens are still the wrong color, the tripod braziers don’t match, and the bar cabinet got tipped over and cracked when the zealous cleaning of the unlucky Ramal found the spiders.


	39. Chapter 39

The Great Ganondorf in his mercy manages to keep himself busy all morning and into afternoon. It is approaching the hour of madness, and he is still dancing with his shadow in the sword court.

He dismissed his Elite to their rest, he dismissed all offers of sparring partners until tomorrow, and his appointments resulting from the petition hours don’t begin until almost midnight. Yet. He dances under the punishing afternoon sun in his topaz and his black linen, rotating through a whole host of weapons and bright magic.

Nialet  _ meant _ to carry the spicebark-brown vicuña straight to the laundry court to prepare it for an indigo bath. It is not proper to overdye something black _ ish _ \- he  _ should _ have only natural black or Sun’s Heart black. They do not have enough of the seed hulls prepared - they always need so much for mourning purples. It is a make-do answer at best, and  _ only _ if they manage to force the hastily-patchworked coverlets to dry over the ovens in time, without scorching. She is thinking of how to mask the stench of mordant and scent of cooking without rewetting the cloth. She is calculating how many bundles her lavender can afford to give for bouquets hung with the bed curtains, how many lemongrass, how many spice-basil, how many salvia.

She is  _ also _ mesmerized by his deadly dance.

Her feet refuse to move, even as that other part of her mind is racing ahead with plans and calculations. Her eyes demand she make sense of the pattern beyond the arches opening the wall between sword-court and the clear ground where they used to trellis cucumbers and now drill unit patterns. 

Eight spears around the edge of the sword-court stand aligned with each petal of the sword-flower. Tiny balls of light in every color fly faster than she can track, weaving thin trails of their color behind them. They crackle faintly as they fly, like lightherb pods snapping closed when she brushes her hand over the delicate leaves. The lights strike the spear-hafts and fly back into the flower only to be struck again with flashing steel and sent on a new path. 

The hilts of his odd blades are gold, but his constant motion makes it impossible to see any details of their design. The ribbons dancing after his beringed hands are violently orange. His eyes seem to glow like molten glass.

Nialet tells herself to return to the mountain of work his visit brought them. 

She is not the only one captivated by the sphere of rainbow light their king weaves. Everyone is quiet - there will be time for gossip later. This moment is for drinking in the terrible beauty that is the Great Ganondorf. 

Only when the sphere of colored light trails forms a tight, shimmering shell does he slow and settle at center. He stares through the sphere, through her, consuming the remaining wisps with the common Eighth Bind Pattern as he sinks into the Roc’s Fist stance, one knee raised, the other grounded, his blades snapped wide like a roc mantling over his prey. 

His expression is completely opaque as the glow of his eyes dims down to something almost normal. He frowns faintly, but in a strangely detached way. He is neither angry nor triumphant. He is still as stone. The wind does not even dare to play with his sword-ribbons.

Someone cries the beginnings of the ritual salute. Others join her, and inside a few breaths it becomes a Hymn of Thunder.  _ Now _ a brow arches.  _ Now _ one corner of his lip quirks up in wry amusement.  _ Now _ his eyes focus - on her.

Nialet shivers.

“Hn,” says Ganondorf, the clipped sound somehow perfectly clear to her despite the jubilant song. He rises smoothly, snapping his blades in a tight roll. He vanishes them and the light-sphere together, striding forward to claim a towel from the narrow rack on his side of the arch. 

His grin quirks wider as he wipes his hands. “Like what you see, avadha?”

Nialet swallows hard, unsettled by the clarity of his deep rumble in the midst of so much noise. It  _ must _ be magic - his lips move, to be sure, but he is not  _ shouting _ to make himself heard, and anyone else would surely have to. 

“Hn,” he says again, stroking the sweat from his sharp features. He strides through the arch, looking neither left nor right. Only at her. 

Nialet begs her tongue to find  _ something _ correct, as her mind refuses to move at all. “Blessed are those in the light of the Sun's Ray.”

He grins wider, dragging the linen down his corded neck. His close-fit black linen kurta clings to him, no longer so effective at smoothing the abrupt hungry ledges of his body. He is starting to grow into his bones, but he carries not one ounce of softer flesh. “That is not what I asked, l’vaisa Davayu.”

Nialet bites the inside of her cheek in an effort to keep the profanity inside.

Ganondorf tips his head the other way, looming over her as the Hymn rolls on around them. He studies her with the same almost-predatory intensity as this morning, waiting for her to move. 

She can feel other eyes on her. She feels like a mouse too far from her burrow when the roc’s shadow passes over. She coughs, and tells her stomach to be still. “My king - forgive me.”

He lifts a brow.

“Your linen. It wasn’t properly mord- they didn’t finish the dye,” she blurts. “It must be newly off the tailor’s needle. Don’t blame your servant - it is a difficult alchemy. The uneven salts cannot be allowed to dry.”

“Hn,” he says with a sardonic grin, wadding the towel in his hands. “So. You want me to take my shirt off.”

“I  _ want _ my king not to look like he rolled in a salt pit tomorrow,” she says, her cheeks hot with embarrassment to have her intention so twisted before her young king and everyone. Her tongue does not abide her command to stop. “Your trousers are even worse thanks to your horse, but we can salvage it. Probably. Three days to brew it deep enough, but we should have plenty of sun’s heart seeds for just two garments.”

The corners of his golden eyes crease, but he says nothing.

Nialet gestures. “Laundry court to your left, third archway.”

His brows rise, and his hands grow still.

“Will my king wish us to deliver the finished work to the garrison west of us or north? Or to the Roc of the north?”

He tips his chin, grinning a little wider. “Unnecessary. Some things are best attended  _ personally _ .”

Nialet swallows her curses, throat painfully dry. “Does my king prefer the  _ personal _ attendance of citron or spicewood?”

His brows draw down in unvoiced query.

“Soap,” she rasps, trying not to fidget too much.

He says nothing, but he shifts a half step back in retreat as his brows arch once more. 

Nialet’s foolish tongue does  _ not _ retreat. “Or soup. As my king prefers it.”

“Hn,” he says, drawing the sound out this time. The towel in his hands vanishes, and he shifts his stance again. A sort of half-bow, bringing his eyes almost to her level. “Which do  _ you _ prefer, l’vaisa?”

“Neither,” she says quickly, gesturing toward the laundry court again. “Cloth dries all too fast at the hour of madness. I will fill a basket with a cake of each blend we have, so the Sun’s Ray may choose as he likes when he rests in our humble baths.”

“What I  _ like  _ is that this estate has sufficient hidden waters to supply -  _ hn _ \- more intimate comforts,” he says, pivoting the opposite direction. “You may collect this  _ unfinished linen  _ from my quarters.”

“That’s -  _ not _ a good idea. At present.” Nialet counters hurriedly.

He pauses mid-step.

“O my King,” she adds, thinly.

“Avadha. If you’ve been unable to see the lanterns, and no sister has troubled herself to tell you, as of the fourth hour of nadir tonight, I will have been on campaign for  _ fourteen months and nine days, _ and so I shall remain for the foreseeable future. A little dust on the tables is of so little consequence I cannot even  _ begin _ to measure it.”

“It’s not the dust,” she blurts, hugging the blankets tight to her chest.

The Great Ganondorf draws wind to speak.

“It’s the  _ kittens _ ,” whispers Nialet, petrified to confess their failure to convince the mother to move her litter. Not that he wouldn’t have discovered it eventually, but she  _ had _ hoped with more time, one of them would manage. “One of the storehouse cats. We have few guests. Fewer still are exalted. We found her this morning.”

“I  _ see _ ,” he rumbles, beckoning her close. “You must show me the way to this nest at once.  _ Personally _ .”


	40. Chapter 40

Nialet stands at one of the stateroom windows as the hour of madness cedes her grasp on the world. She is pretending to stare at the garden below. She cannot slip  _ quietly _ out of any window. She is neither warrior nor thief. Even so, the shutters surely cannot be louder than the bead-and-bell curtain dividing the private room from the public - and the door. She is thinking about trying it. She is wondering if she will ruin the extravagant Terminan gourd-leaf brocade.

She cannot take either path because her king has not dismissed her.

He is  _ unable _ to dismiss her. 

He is asleep sitting mostly-upright  _ beside _ the bed they spent so much frenzy preparing, with eight kittens in a fuzzy heap on his middle. His hands still form a crescent wall on one side of their wiggly tangle, and his chin rests against one shoulder, caught in the moment sleep ambushed him. The black one abandoned their sibs ten minutes ago to climb his chest and curl in the tiny hollow under his smooth-shaven jaw, and  _ still _ he did not have the mercy to wake. His hair is halfway escaping the fat knot he put it in that morning, and his crown is askew. His linens are filthy, and the dried sweat  _ has _ crystallized exactly as she said it would, wicking the dye in random patches all over.

Ganondorf knows to the day and even the  _ hour _ how long the War Lanterns have been burning. Whatever moved him to attack Hyrule so suddenly and forcefully was no whim at all. Something  _ happened _ . Hyrule did something so terrible it pushed a  _ Great King _ to change his course and turn his full wrath upon them. The tireless, arrogant, ruthless mastery of the Great Ganondorf has forged him into a powerful warlord. Now that she has seen him dance in  _ practice _ , she understands the recent rumors about demons sprout from fertile ground.

The young man who was once a witchborn child, whose name someone wanted everyone to forget, abandoned all proper ritual  _ everything _ to coax a half-feral mouser into trusting him with her babies. A young man once called  _ flower of hopefulness _ is a little shy of seventeen, and he is so exhausted he has fallen asleep in the middle of adoring a litter of helpless kittens.

Nialet does not have strong spiriteyes when it comes to people. His control  _ was _ perfect. His appearance of indefatigable strength and his command of himself approaches inhuman. 

Twice now, she has seen his mask crack.

Four times, if she counts seeing him climbing over the walls of the Golden Fortress in secret eleven years ago, and his passionate condemnation of anyone not wearing purple after the disaster of the stampeding horses.

She never learned his child-name in the season she served at the Golden Fortress. Everyone simply referred to him as the hopeless witchchild. Yet - when Setta returned home with the bones of her daughter in a mournful little box, when she recited the ritual salute - it plucked the strings of memory and she could hear the words clear as anything. Seeing him asleep with the kittens only makes her more certain of what she has suspected since Setta’s return.

Sixteen years ago, she remembers coming home from war, even though she is not a warrior. She remembers lotus columns, and she remembers blood. She remembers a child’s voice calling her a nobody, and she remembers a name was spoken that filled her with a fearful hope.

She is beginning to think the memories of battlefields and bone do not fit the rest at all. Those memories feel strangely hollow - horrid flashing images with neither sound nor scent nor taste nor texture.

The fragmentary image of lotus-topped columns smells like spicebark and erisfruit and tastes like the vaguely scorched-grain bitterness of the black wind.

The bloody hands gesturing helplessly smell like copper and myrrh. 

The name she was made to forget tastes like erisfruit and honey, and feels oddly familiar on her tongue. She’s tried to persuade herself since Setta’s return that it is only the ritual poetry making it  _ seem _ familiar. That it is a mirage.

Even  _ thinking _ it feels like sorrow pressing on her chest.

Her War King has fallen asleep  _ sitting on the floor _ , giving comfort to eight insignificant little fuzzballs. As if he is secretly starving for softness in his life.

The most powerful spirit in the whole of the vast golden lands.

Starving.

Many warriors of sixteen and seventeen are wiry things, even though the Legions eat better than average. It is the nature of being young. Growing things are always and forever hungry. As king, as prince, as a  _ Chalut _ he has surely eaten the best of anyone in the country all his life. And yet his body holds no nourishing reserve at all.

Setta wrote often during her season in his palace that he never tires, never sleeps.

Her young War King is so far from consciousness the needle-claws of a kitten didn’t even make him twitch.

Sorrow drags at her bones to consider that his body was able to enforce rest upon him only because neither she nor the kittens are strong enough or important enough for him to see them a threat.

It is not just this campaign.

The cry of his spirit at five years old demanded he escape the fortress every night at great physical cost, and yet appear perfect and tireless the next day. He has been using his magic to feed his strength and hide his heart for a long, long time.

Nialet hisses profane treason at the afternoon sky beyond the louvered shutters, that the Great Rova who starved their child to force him towards perfection and power might choke to death on their next feast.


	41. Chapter 41

Nialet lies to the elder mothers, to the whole estate. Not one of them questions her, not even Beytu, though  _ her _ expression says clearly enough she is not lying  _ well _ . She tells them the Great Ganondorf postpones every appointment, that he is speaking with his Rocs and Council on some urgent matter far away. That the distance demands focus and therefore quiet. That he prefers to eat in solitude. That he will not tolerate disturbance.

She steals  _ every  _ key to the state room from the Rahalin Ramal, though as l’vaisa she could have demanded them. She prefers to feed the rumor that Himself whisked them away by magic to enforce his demand for privacy. She bribes a Kharish to prepare food that will stand well in lidded pots overnight - so the scent doesn’t awaken him - and she packs her own tiny spirit-stove and copper pot into the basket of provisions she sneaks into the state room as dusk approaches. She lays everything ready for him in silence, praying the Mother of Sands holds him in merciful rest as she works. She dares not approach the bead-and-bell curtain to make certain of it, but secures the heavy door with lock and bar, letting herself out one of the glazed windows, though it is three harrowing minutes clutching shallow hand-holds to close and lock  _ that _ again.

Risa intercepts her in the garden below, fretting over the lack of copper or any other thing that could patch the cracked tile and stone before twilight. 

She doesn’t know how to deflect her without drawing even more attention to the dark windows of the state room. She trusts Risa. She is a beloved sister. Yet  _ something _ leashes her tongue when she considers telling her the plain truth.

She lies again.

She says the Great Ganondorf is disappointed in the inferior dimensions of the little tiled bath, that he orders they scour the main baths and clear them for his private use at nadir.

Her word sparks a frenzy of unnecessary labor for everyone - but she is only half sorry. 

No one - not even his escort - sees or hears the smallest hint of the Great Ganondorf until the fifth hour of the following morning. Nor does anyone mark him crossing garden or court or hall. He simply  _ appears _ in the shadows of the densely woven grape arbor at the end of the apricots, dressed in a red silk kurta and black labyrinth-weave sirwal, both with thread-of-gold borders. His black riding boots are tooled and gilded, and he wears his abundant hair loose but for the delicate minish chain securing the platinum and jasper Serpent Crown. He leans against one of the posts with his arms folded, as if he has waited there for hours.

Nialet rises from tending the witch hazel to salute him. She regrets returning to summer-weight working clothes.

He studies her quietly for a long moment, his golden eyes unreadable. The subtle wry twist at the corner of his lips says nothing. When he weaves words at last, his tone is low and rumbling. “There lies a manor three days east of the Thundering River above a lush valley overflowing with every kind of stone fruit. The hills are so thick with wheat and oats that after the burning months the green lands ripen into gold from one horizon to the other. The last caretaker fled before our glory. It needs a strong hand to discipline its abundance.”

Nialet wipes her pruning knife clean and wipes her hands on the rag after to buy another moment to think. He asks no question that could be answered cleanly, makes no offer that can be refused, no order that must be obeyed. “How far does it lay from the new border, O my King?”

He lifts one brow. “Three days’ hard ride.”

“Hn. Six for a Hylian Legion,” she says, considering his implied temptation. “That much land would need four, maybe five hundred hands to manage without waste if the green lands are as fertile as they say. Even with a horse for every two avadha, so many of the People cannot evacuate with only three days’ warning, and that many fourfoots would consume half the grain grown there. Post a small unit there to send word when wild harvest nears readiness, and send a Legion to strip the orchards. Varcha can be trained to mow whatever grain can survive without tending, but another problem arises with threshing and storing. Our Rahalin Kharish might have some ideas.”

“The wisdom of a skilled Davayu would enrich the Golden Legions.”

“As you say, O my King.”

“Hn,” he returns, pushing away from the tree. “In three days we ride further west. Have your scholar bring me any mention of the Toruma dunelands, or any mythic place that might be  _ based on _ Toruma. The First Legion will assemble at Nima Garrison before solstice. A proper mount and guard will be sent to Karusa garrison.”

“Vo’hei,” she says, bowing. Anything more and she will swear to his face.

He stalks away without further comment.


	42. Chapter 42

Four days the king allows his Elite to rest. 

He spends his hours hunting, dancing in the sword court, attending petitions, and studying scrolls. When they leave before the fifth dawn, the coldrooms are overflowing with pronghorn and quail and rabbit, the cracked bath has been repaired as if it had never known any blemish at all, half a dozen new chests of  _ powdered _ dyestuff stand in the storeroom below it, and a whole chest of black reeled silk is found in the weavers’ courts.

Nialet sits with the temptation of the soft eastearn manor for days. She does not mention it to Risa. She assembles her namesisters to discuss their strategies for the burning months. She considers their spirits, their experience, their opinions of the young plants in their Foreigner’s Court. She holds Nephra back when the others leave.

She does not ask the elder mothers.

She does not even  _ tell _ them until she is raising a salute before everyone. She celebrates the prosperous future of their bold sister at the evening meal, two days after Karusa Garrison confirmed Nephra avadha Davayu arrived in perfect health and will be escorted further east by a respected Dhana from Oseira Valley, on the old southeast border.

No one comments directly, not in public.

Beytu and Setta make up for the quietude of everyone else in private later that night. They are convinced the King will be furious with her disobedience, and they are probably right. She cannot explain to them  _ why _ she fears neither death nor the traitor’s scourge.

She is far more unsettled by word that several of the Elite they hosted did not return with him to Nima. Worse - he neither stays at Nima nor travels with the First Legion, but selects sixteen warriors to return to the Sands with him, leaving his Ramal and Kharish behind.

Toruma has a fierce reputation for good reason. It is said there are necropolis there. It is said there are temples to dread powers hidden under the dunes. It is said whole pods of molduga prey on the blin tribes who live out there.

Word comes a few weeks later that the Seres Scablands have fallen, and Hyrule is pressing towards Illumeni. Neither is too terrible a loss in itself, but Thundra and Lindor beyond would have enriched the People greatly - and holding the entire west bank of a river is far easier than defending on two fronts. Three, if one counts the stretch of sharp ridgelands dividing the southern part of the Vosterkun provinces from Hyrule proper. The darknut have not made  _ much _ trouble,  _ yet _ , but it is a very tangible risk.

A week later, the Great Ganondorf comes alone to the gates of Risoka Fortress, demanding twenty warriors.

Illumeni falls.

The Legions retreat to Hemaar and Rumeni. They hold.

Nephra sends word over the spiritwinds: half the grain in her new home burned in a plains wildfire before they were halfway established, but the valley is heavy with riches. She promises to send whatever the Roc allows, and sings praise for the Great Ganondorf.

The next word of Himself mentions nothing of his warriors. He appeared at Laparoh Fortress alone, bearing a fearsome three-bladed weapon with a bloodamber gem embedded in the steel where the blades meet the haft.

Eiju swears and flees the council room. She takes a horse and threatens the Varcha who tries to stop her at the gate. She is gone for three days, and when she drags herself back, exhausted and sick with exposure, she will not confess to anyone where she went or why.

Nialet spends a full day in their little archive, retracing his studies as best she can without Eiju to help. She wonders what scroll or tome they could possibly have offered that their king does not already own thrice over. Her fingers itch and sting like she handles thistle-poppy ungloved when she finds the pair of old frayed memento books on the shelves with everything else. She never really read them - only paged through in her hunt for anything familiar about the Nameless ghost whose starry mantle she still keeps and sings apologies over during Veil Rites.

One is almost entirely about obsolete devotions and the other is concerned with recalculations of star patterns and flood patterns from both living witness  _ and _ the songs of the ancients. She overrules her first instinct to discard them, sifting through the section notations. A tiny scrap of black silk ribbon falls from between some latter pages of the first. Closer inspection reveals a cautionary tale about forbidden temples.

A speculation about the fabled Desert of Doubt.

A fragment of ancient poetry describing the terrible bargain by which the Demon Trishul was forged, and how by the might of the three-bladed, bloodamber-bound weapon a great evil spirit was divided from the mortal world and sealed by the work of the King and Exalted and Sages and Rova all together.

A few days later comes the rumor that Hyrule has allied with the Goron for their fireflower. 

The War Lanterns burn, but the Legions do not move either forward or back. No one passes any fresher word of the king.

Nialet pulls Eiju aside while everyone else rejoices over the barrels and barrels of apples Nephra sent west. She confirms that  _ any _ competent scholar would recognize the Demon Trishul on sight, and any lawweaver would know at once that the Great King has defied truly ancient laws to steal it from the temple it was sealed in. He has sacrificed many lives to seize its fell power for himself, and in his triumph he sets himself above all precedent and all the ancestors.

Nialet lays awake for many nights, consumed with dread for whatever unknown danger her king needs such a terrible weapon for.


	43. Chapter 43

At winter solstice, news from the southeast says Hyrule has reclaimed half of Zokassa Ridge, and the red cough has flowered in five different garrisons.

The Great Ganondorf is not with any of the Legion, or in any of his palaces.

They say he is hunting somewhere in the Sand Sea with the Great Rova.

They say he appears without warning, but never stays more than a few hours. They say he is always alone, always riding a frightening red-eyed warmare, but they say her tracks vanish a league from anywhere he leaves. They say a dark tempest follows him, that the black winds do not sweep over the golden lands this year because he has leashed them to his Will.

The Exalted Sun orders raid parties into Deya Valley, Kolomo, and Gleeok.

No one dares to say it, but in the silence around the spare recitations of fact, their spirits resonate with anxiousness. The sword of conquest has lost its brilliance after only two little years, and their Great War King has become a lore-seeking phantom.


	44. Chapter 44

Nialet is a month to her thirty-eighth birthday when the great brass horns sound alarm in the middle of the afternoon. She waits for the drums to follow, just in case, but she knows already it cannot be her King. He moves with dawn and twilight, in the hours when the worldthreads draw close in passing power from day to night and back again. She does not exchange her working clothes for better, but throws on the first clean mantle she can lay her hands on, and meets the strangers at the gate with dirt still under her nails.

The Exalted Sun dismounts from her glossy strawberry roan warmare, dazzling in gold-washed scalemail and yards of sacred cloth tinted ever so slightly dawnlight pink. 

“Va’hei,” rasps Nialet, stunned by the fearsome might of the warrior at her gates, laden with garnet and jasper and corundum, even to her weighty golden gauntlets and the great claymore on her back. She still carries an elegant pair of Roc’s Talon backswords, and from her saddle hangs a radiant shield adorned with bright enamel and enchanted jewels.

Nabooru laughs at her and claps her on the shoulder. “And here the Rahalin of Karusa said you are rude. Sav’aaq, avha. What say you to an early dinner?”

“As you wish it, Exalted One,” Nialet stammers, a little winded from another genial thump. She steps aside to let the little party enter fully, pointing out the path to the stables, and to the warriors’ courts if they want them. 

Nabooru’s sharp golden eyes sweep over the entry court, and she paces the stones as she tugs her gauntlets off. She still wears her bright hair in a Saiev-style horsetail with a single fat ornament, and her amber spirit gem is still the same flawless honey-gold she remembers on the brow of a feisty youth. “Nice place. Almost as lush as the great Davai Oasis.”

It is a great complement. She mumbles something like gratitude, fumbling after a pattern fit for conversing with  _ another _ living legend in her garden. “We understood the Exalted was in the southeast. The last news that reached us from the Fortress of Faloraa-”

“Aha.  _ There’s _ the edge,” Nabooru cuts in with a wicked, lopsided grin very much like her brother’s. “Deya and Proxim are still secure, avha. A little band of softlands highwaymen here and there is nothing to our glory. Have a little faith in our Rocs and Rahalin.”

“Of course,” says Nialet, burning with embarrassment. “It is only that our humble little home is so far from-”

“It is not every day a common  _ nobody _ questions me anymore,” Nabooru counters, grasping her shoulder to steer her toward the central building. “You last served with the Legions, what, eleven years ago? Much has changed while you’ve been off conquering melons and safflina for the glory of our sisters.”

“Forgive me, O Exalted,” begins Nialet.

Nabooru laughs. “Enough, I get plenty of deference from the unblooded younglings and my fill of fear from the softlanders. I almost forgot the spice of worthy challenge. We shall have to thank the Great Ganondorf for the recommendation, yeah?”

“Fuck,” says Nialet’s tongue without asking first.

Nabooru laughs again, shaking her in what she probably means as a friendly camaraderie. Or else a promise of escorting her to the Ancestors in short order. It is impossible to know which. “Call me Nabs, yeah? We  _ are _ sisters, after all.”

Technically true in a  _ poetic _ sense, yet not even close in a tangible one. “This is about Nephra reporting to Nima Garrison, isn’t it?”

“Yes and no,” says Nabooru, pulling her lip between her teeth in thought as they climb the diamond-cut mountain granite steps to the central building. “Your intuition is proven correct: Nephra is well-suited to her work, while time has shown us your  _ specific _ talents will best serve the People elsewhere. How do you feel about making the acquaintance of Nautelle Marsh? Parache Plain? Harfin Valley?”

“Does it matter?” Nialet sighs as they pass through the great doors.

Nabooru does not laugh. She draws to a halt and cups both her shoulders, meeting her eye with somber expression. “There is  _ always _ a choice, Nialet avadha Davayu. Hear the word I bring to you, and listen to the cry of your spirit. You will have four days to consider the field, but I can give you no more than that before the Legions  _ must _ move.”

“Do you also tempt me with a fat Hylian farm?”

Nabooru grins, releasing her and gesturing toward the deep pile of cushions near the stairs, where the Ramal have moved them to clean the floors. No doubt whatever she means to claim them all. “You might say that. If you call  _ twenty thousand hectares _ of soil black as midnight  _ a _ farm.”


	45. Chapter 45

Nialet stands beside Beytu on the crest of a verdant hill at equinox, watching the morning mist drift through the valleys below. The very air is heavy in these lands, even when it  _ isn’t _ raining. Reading every report Nabooru can requisition still cannot accustom her to the sheer ecstatic growth all around her. Their road has woven across the whole of the soft new province under the rule of the Second Legion. It is beautiful country, and the Hylians who chose to stay and bow to the might of the Geld’o are deeply tied to their land. 

They are not, however, good farmers. 

For too many generations the distant Hylian overkings said what they should grow, filling farm after farm with the ‘best’ wheat and the fattest pumpkins. The same gummy blight the People conquered with so much careful labor destroyed the latter four years ago, and yet they continued to plant the same vulnerable gourd-sisters over and over, begging their idiot royals for help that never came. The wheat yield has fallen every season. First it was too much rain, then not enough, then some local weevil, then a must in the kernel which evaded notice until threshing time revealed a whole year’s work was for nothing.

They have forgotten how to feed themselves and the land as one. Every farm has a small kitchen garden, but the management of a plot meant to feed only one Hylian family - fewer than  _ one _ remote outpost tower for the People - does not scale easily to the vastness of whole fields. Growth in the softlands is vigorous for everything - weed and wanted alike. The farmhouses are too small and too divided, and even with the Legions laboring beside them, they cannot stay ahead of the work. 

Despite frequent rotation, the sinking morale of their warriors begins to fester.

“Hell of a sentence you’ve landed us,” Beytu grumbles, leaning on her spear. “I’m starting to think what they say about his  _ swift judgment _ is true as a mare’s cock. First he shoves Setta’s face in the latrine what with forcing her to see him with poor Ardin, then strips her of a warrior’s right to vengeance posting her back to the ass end of nowhere  _ permanently _ , and now? You want a farm? Here’s your  _ damn _ farm. Fuck. No wonder the knife-ears say the trees eat houses in the south. The  _ bindweed _ will eat your foot if you sit in one spot too long.”

“At least it’s a beautiful slice of hell,” teases Nialet, nudging the old woman in good humor. “The softlanders  _ are _ learning. Slowly. They don’t expect manners from one of us, so we can cut direct to the heart of things. It’s honestly a relief. If more of them were literate, that would help, but Eiju’s sketches are worth their weight in diamonds. Anyways, I’m not so sure it  _ is _ punishment.”

“The fuck it’s not. We’re  _ weeks _ from home and under the direct oversight of the damn Exalted for the entire foreseeable future because  _ you _ had to insult the Great Ganondorf with turning down a promotion. Don’t you listen to the winds, girl? He  _ likes _ torture, does our king. He’s just - more  _ creative _ about it than some.”

“Yeah? And how exactly would it be better for anyone if you’d lost your head twelve years ago?”

“Fuck you,” says Beytu without heat. “He wasn’t on the field back in those days.”

“Wasn’t he? Or is it every day you see a twelve-year old argue down the High Council for a  _ nobody _ ? And  _ win _ ? She had  _ power _ behind her, avha.”

“ _ Technically _ thirteen,” says the old woman, scowling at the ground. “Look, we all want our Great King to be everything good and wonderful, a blessing of the Mother made flesh. I get it. Just remember I served the Legions before you were thought of, and I  _ know _ the kind of heart it takes to kill a person, on the field and off. Never forget he was forged a War King for a  _ reason _ , girl. He’s a born killer, and it’s just our good fortune the gods sent him to  _ our _ side. That’s it.”

“Hn,” says Nialet, considering her words even as another part of her mind moves ahead to the next farm on their circuit, where Eiju reports they’re seeing the same black spotted mold affecting both thornberries and curly featherleaf, though the two are in no way kin. “Who does it serve for us to believe that?”

Beytu frowns at her.

“If we can be made to forget a name, a place, a sister, a whole  _ year _ \- who is to say our spirits have not been led astray of the truth in other ways? Only the fool cuts runningweed where the leaves rise from the dirt,” Nialet counters. “We are nobodies. We cannot see the whole of the pattern our king dances. He who knows the roots will know the best way to sever them before they starve the fields.”

“Yeah, well. Trusting him to  _ know _ the patterns of evil is one thing. Whether he has any interest in taking his cursed blade  _ to _ them? Different fucking question.”


	46. Chapter 46

Summer is harder. Eiju is kind, and happy enough to help Padda carry the conversation most nights. Their evenings are too quiet since the Exalted sent Beytu home. It is better that she has Risa to guide her recovery from the freak lizal strike and the infection which followed. Still, Nialet misses Beytu’s sharp and bawdy wit.

Nabooru is much like her, but though the Exalted Sun crosses their path too often to be pure chance, she is necessarily busy with more important matters. She spoke the truth about the province: most of it is pacified well enough. Most of the active fighting is a week away, and under her command they are not tied to a single estate with hundreds of lives depending on their judgment and whatever warriors the Legion can spare.

She is thirty-eight and a half, and though the bloodcycles of her growing season still come to her, it is anyone’s guess how long that will continue. The Ashak were forced to sever those roots within her amali when she bore her last seedling into the dawn at thirty-five, as they did for her vaba, and many of her foremothers and kinsisters before her. There is always a risk in bearing, but more for some than others.

And yet, after so many years of fruitless longing, she still cannot conquer it. 

None of the Hylian farmers are interesting enough to tempt her out of her dusty oath, and none of the support staff or guards Nabooru assigned to her kindle anything more than friendship, even after half a year in close company.

Padda teases the confession from her as autumn begins to touch the soft green country with gold and amber as her king said it would. She drank a little more than she should have, and she regrets both the Tears and her words in the morning, but everyone is both kind and discreet about it.

Or - she believes they are, until the Exalted just  _ happens _ to arrive at Proxim Hamlet a day early and stays two days longer than she meant to.

Nabooru proves to be  _ very _ good at drinking, and even better at persuading Nialet to indulge with her. She says many things which blur into the fog of the inevitable hangover, and yet manages to persuade Nialet to join her again the next night, and the next. She speaks of sisterhood, and she speaks of her own haphazard love life. She speaks of her current partner Cafei with affection, but not really  _ attachment _ . She walks the sun-path as fiercely as her brother - though neither of them have confirmed the connection, no one acquainted with both could doubt it - and she confesses she’s surrendered any hope of her spirit flowering for the moon. At twenty-five.

She says they live in a time of crossing threads. She says the patterns of the world are shifting. She says love of every kind is a choice in the same way one’s Name is: it cannot be forced. One may walk into the Sands a hundred times, and find the spiritroads once, never, a dozen times, but they cannot be  _ made _ to offer anything. She also says accepting means choosing the hard work of walking the pattern, whatever the final cost.

It is a strange kind of wisdom to find on the tongue of a great warrior, and stranger still is the introspective, melancholy tone in which she says it. 

Nialet finds her thoughts wandering to the riddle of her king as she considers it. The spirits lead her tongue to unwisely repeat the old rumor about a pair of warrior children who cannot be defeated when they stand together.

Nabooru laughs, at first. She says it is true. It is an impossible feat. 

She sobers, staring into the hearthfire of the little Hylian cottage they’ve taken for the night. She says quietly that strength is one thing, and spirit is another. Skill is one thing, experience is another.

Nialet hears in the silence between her words the seven years dividing the Exalted Sun and the Great King she serves. For now. She no longer wonders if the  _ different fucking question  _ Beytu raised lives in the mind of her Exalted also. No one ever says which of them wins in a spar  _ between _ them.

One of Nabooru’s warnings falls differently than perhaps she meant it to. In the middle of praising the superiority of the Geld’o tradition of raising the ilmaha of many amali together, she cautions Nialet that bearing without a lifebond will mean a kind of lesser Exile into the far west of the country, a month or more beyond the Thundering River. 

The villages and tribes love and guide all their ilmaha, but the law demands the final responsibility falls to  _ someone _ . The law is indifferent to which amali stays with a child, though in practice the first years are often led by she who bears. Orphans are swept up by other amali, and it is rarely if ever a problem to find one willing to open her heart, when so many babies are lost to the ravens of plague and war and hunger and the unforgiving Sands. Nonetheless, the People do not regard kindly amali who bear without  _ someone _ already waiting to take the child into the west.

Going west would mean a hard life persuading the land to feed them, but she would be surrounded by amali - many of them moon-path - and dozens of ilmaha of every age and spirit. A sprawling, soft family. A whole village in need of her talents to fill their bowls.

It is the opposite of dissuasion, and she is just drunk enough to say it. She waves off Nabooru’s teasing laughter and bawdy warnings about the rarity of thorns in the west.

“It is a hopeless daydream anyway. I’ve tried many times, and it has never come to anything. I no longer have the supple strength of youth to tangle with strangers and uncertain tomorrows.”

“You become a poet when your tongue is watered, avha.” Nabooru chuckles, pouring more sharp Tears for both of them, sweetening one glass with Hylian thimbleberries and honey, taking the plain for herself. “All tomorrows are uncertain, and always have been. It is only that repetition lulls us into thinking we know the next crossing.”

“Better a poet than a sage,” Nialet counters.

Nabooru hums in amusement. “If you’re serious about bearing unbonded when you sober up tomorrow, you should know I’ve heard rumors that might interest you.”

“I might remember to ask you before you ride out then,” she says.

Nabooru toys with her glass, staring at the fire. “I haven’t cared to make the time to tease truth from the gossip in any  _ personal _ sense. But.  _ Some _ say there is a worker of miracles.”

Nialet narrows her eyes in suspicion. 

Not that it matters, as Nabooru doesn’t look up, either before or after she kills another glass of the potent liquor. “You might’ve heard of him.”

“ _ Oh _ go fuck a voltfruit,” groans Nialet.

Nabooru grins at the flames in malicious mirth.

“The whole thing. Blossom to root.  _ Twice _ .”

Nabooru chuckles.

“ _ Gamontirre hakoum sravoe _ , how could you?”

Nabooru just shrugs and holds up the faceted bottle to measure how little is left. “Titles are just Names writ large, but there’s more than one way to walk a pattern. Think about it.”


	47. Chapter 47

Nialet does as her Exalted advised, whether she means to or not.

She remembers the gossip, the  _ scandal _ of how the young king demanded his second title at the first moment it was possible for him to do so. How he wove a path through sacred poetry to answer the great mystery with one of his own, brewing deep magics to nurture the seedlings of others and prove his fitness to bring rain.

She feels guilty for being glad Beytu is too far away to make it any worse.

Especially when the Legions rotate a quarter-turn and King and Exalted exchange their positions. The Rahalin say it is to keep the Rocs in line, to keep the Hylians guessing.

They also say Illumeni has fallen  _ again _ . That the Legion has retreated west of Tamio, that the Hylians are slowly nibbling away at the northern reaches of the softlands they’ve seized.

The Great Ganondorf does not seem to care.

Nialet tries not to think about it. 

When she cannot make her mind obey, she tells herself it is better if the pain of whatever tragedy pushed him three years ago has dulled with time. She tells herself the heart of grief is not a wise one, and they need a wise king as well as a strong one.

She is  _ not _ prepared to see him engaged with the Reveler’s Devotions over a rainbarrel in the baileycourt of their current host manor-keep when she returns from tethering all the new peavine tendrils that sprouted in the night. The softlands are so mild they can coax two crops from the earth in a year, but whatever drink has her king dunking his head in cold water like a second-year Saiev was most assuredly  _ not _ mild.

Nialet pivots, desperate for another path to deliver her basket of sweet early peas to the two Kharish that serve this unit. The orchard cart is blocking the entry gate, and a heavy black warmare stands with her head thrust through the half-door into the dark little Hylian kitchens in any case. The manor is small - there are storage rooms on the ground level, but the stables are an outbuilding and the main house entry is up a grand stairway in view of everybody, and with the orchard cart being a nuisance, she would have to walk past him anyway.

“Sa’ikhusa,  _ never again _ ,” he rumbles softly to himself, spitting water.

“Everyone says that,” Nialet mutters as she strikes across the little court to try her luck bribing the warmare to move. Every muscle is taut with her efforts  _ not _ to turn about.

The mare abandons her efforts to get into the kitchen only to threaten Nialet instead. She is not interested in peas, or strange two-legs, or the shouting of the poor Kharish she’s been terrorizing for however long.

“ _ Enough _ Zharu,” says the Great Ganondorf in a voice that says he has certainly had more than enough of  _ something _ . “Don’t be afraid, avha. She just likes to be a menace.”

The warmare grumbles and lowers her great feathered hoof, but otherwise does not yield. 

Nialet sighs. “Vo’hei, O va’Rajena.”

“Don’t you dare sound  _ jubilant _ ,” he scoffs with a wry tone, stalking past her to shoo his troublesome horse aside. He berates the beast in a rumbling fall of strange words, but his broad hands are gentle on her glossy hide, and she pivots around him as if she means to defend her strange-looking foal from the whole world. “You are far from home, l’vaisa.”

“Likewise, O my King.”

“Hn,” he says, clawing sodden locks from his eyes as he too pivots to look down at her. He wears the scarab crown somewhere under the tangle that has become of a once-elaborate coiffure, and half the ties of his sodden arming coat are undone, the thick leather corselet road-stained and dripping wet. “You look well.”

Nialet bites her tongue and tries not to even breathe.

“Hn,” he says again, shaking his head and tucking another lock behind his ear. The lobe is torn in two places where his bright earrings were pulled clean through, and she wonders why he did not weave his flesh whole again. “I know.”

A moan of despair escapes her anyway. “But I didn’t  _ say _ any-”

“You don’t have to. I am  _ King _ ,” he says with a sardonic twist. “It’s not what it looks like, for whatever that’s worth.”

“As you say,” she temporizes, baffled by his disquiet even as he asserts the very thing that exempts him from any judgement she might otherwise dare.

He lets the quiet bustle of morning routines flow around them unheeded. His piercing golden eyes are red-rimmed and the lines at the corners of his eyes are deeper than before in a way no cosmetics can hide. His cheeks remain hollow - he is still lean and hungry, but there is a coiled power filling his body now, reshaping him heavier in thigh and shoulders while preserving his trim waist. “You are here for - six days?”

Nialet cannot imagine why her king cares to know it, or why he would feel any need to make polite conversation with a common nobody. She  _ also _ remembers the sting of his rebuke when she tried to deflect him once before. “Eight, but six remain, yes. Unless the hay is ready, in which case we stay until it is done to keep them from throwing it all in a wasteful heap in the Hylian style.”

“You will need dry heat then,” he says, narrowing his bright eyes in thought. “For - five days. Yes. That will work.”

“As you say,” she agrees, still baffled. Perhaps he is offering his storm magic as an excuse to pull off the road for a few days, to rest in at least one way without  _ seeming _ to rest at all. But why would a king need an excuse for anything?

“Hn,” he says, lips quirking in amusement at some private joke. “Two lanterns at the fourth hour, as before. L’vaisa.”

“The largest of their eating halls cannot hold more than twenty in any comfort, and it is both dark and stuffy. The old knights’ refectory was - forgive me, but I directed its refashioning into a storeroom because theirs are good for nothing but tools no one uses and pottery no one wants.”

“Hn,” he says, grin widening. “Eidalu should be along soon enough. She can teach you the pattern that suits places like this. Sav’orq, Davayu.”


	48. Chapter 48

Nialet paces the tight squares of the potager garden. The second blue lantern has burned for a quarter of an hour already. She has washed the rich garden dirt from her skin and scrubbed her nails. She has cursed at each of the articles of green or green-ish clothing she carries with her on circuit, but her venom did not make any of them any finer.

She cannot settle her mind or her stomach. She has barely been able to keep tea and souring-root inside her all morning. She tells herself she is too old to be so foolish. It is just a petition. Other avadha petition all the time, for any number of things they could have achieved by other roads, and some that are impossible: find this, fix that, send this message, settle that dispute, change my body, speak to the dead for me, give me a love potion, make me a great warrior, bless my lifebond, heal my child, plant a seed, bring a storm.

“What if he thinks I ask -  _ that-? _ ” Nialet asks the foreign herbs.

The herbs shake their blooms at her folly.

Padda chides her from the kitchen door. “Just  _ go _ , fidgetwing.”

“You don’t understand,” Nialet grumbles, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“I’ve seen him heal battlewounds and summon spirits with my own eyes. If anyone can say whether your body will bear a seedling, it’s him.”

“What if it’s not enough? I don’t know these things! Why did Eiju have to go to the stupid garrison  _ today _ , of all days?”

“And here I thought you paid attention,” Padda scoffs, nodding in the direction of the humble tin box of thimbleberry-stuffed pastry. “If it’s sugar, he likes it. Now get your skinny ass upstairs and put your name into the queue. The doors are open, but his servant is only allowing three to wait  _ in _ the room, so nobody’s going to be in your business.”

“That never yet stopped a gossip,” Nialet counters with a sigh.


	49. Chapter 49

The Great Ganondorf waits patiently as she fumbles through the formal pattern of the full salute, invoking every title and presenting her tiny box of tribute. For everyone ahead of her, he asked simply:  _ what do you seek, avadha? _

For her, he raises a brow at the little box and says  _ nothing _ .

It is not a refusal of the question she has not yet asked, but it is not  _ permission _ either.

She waits.

So does he, watching her like he’s become an enormous, aloof storehouse cat.

Nialet fidgets with the tin box and bows again, hoping it softens a little of the offense. “O my King - I need a prophecy.”

“That’s not how this works,” he rumbles, tipping his chin.

“It is the closest word I know,” she confesses with a shrug. “There are several paths before me, but I cannot mark the difference between, and I do not have the strength to try and fail on each to learn their shape first. Your eyes see what others cannot.”

He tips his chin the other way. “It needs no magic to see the path will depend upon where you’re going.”

“That depends on what these paths hold for me.”

“Again. Not how this works.”

“Please, my King, I  _ know _ my tribute is poor, but if in your mercy you will consider it a mere beginning - a  _ seed _ \- then I will tend it for you to harvest when it please you.”

“Learning what lays ahead will in itself change the path. It is a tomorrow unwoven,” he begins.

“Please - I am no heroine. I don’t have enough strength to waste any more of it in the pursuit of a hopeless desire.  _ Tell me _ , O my King, or else cut it from my spirit that I may know  _ some _ peace this side of the veil.”

His brows rise. “The blade that is forgotten does not cease to be, nor does it cease to cut. It merely kills from the shadows, unknowable and therefore invulnerable and unstoppable.”

Nialet sighs, bowing again and gathering herself for the salute of retreat. She wonders if it is forbidden to eat rejected tribute. She’s come to like Hylian thimbleberries.

“Unweaving a desire is delicate work, best done in quiet, without mortal distractions. All magic worth the effort requires focus of spirit, and clarity of Will. Consider carefully what  _ precisely _ you wish to become, and return at the hour of madness.”

“Vo’hei,” she says weakly, bowing a third time.


	50. Chapter 50

Nialet no longer wonders why avadha who petition often retreat from society for hours or even  _ days _ after. She cannot get  _ any _ work done. Her hands tremble too much for the knife, and her mind cannot discern anything in Eiju’s charts and surveys. She does not have  _ time _ to venture any farther than the immediate gardens within the manor-keep and back again if she will be clean before her king.  _ Presentable _ is not actually an option, given the state of her limited wardrobe.

The fruitless hours drag. 

The hour of madness ripens too soon.

Eidalu avadha Ramal waits beside the same doors in the same boxy blue jacket, filling her idle time with spinning the same kitten-fine vicuña as before, though now the fat cop on her lapis-whorl spindle has grown so large it steals half the vigor from her twist. Three tiny blue lanterns hang above the closed doors, though the War Lanterns still burn as before. The benches in the corridor are made to Hylian measures, barely tolerable when absolutely necessary and a challenge to rise from when tired or anxious. She is both.

“Unless your  _ true desire _ is to stare at the fields from a fresh angle, you don’t need to wait out here,” says Eidalu with a wide grin. “These burn for  _ you _ .”

Nialet sighs. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I am making a fool of myself. Tell my king I changed my mind.”

“Tell him yourself,” counters Eidalu, jerking her chin toward the door as the lever clicks down and frees the latch. No doubt by magic, whether of servant or king.

Nialet curses under her breath, fidgeting with the tin box. She’s right. It’s too late to avoid the consequence of her folly. She looks only at the polished maple floors as she slips through the door. Which closes behind her without a mortal hand on it. The room is dim in spite of the hour, every indigo velvet curtain drawn closed and only a handful of lamps burning inside their mica shades. Some complex herb and resin incense softens the air - she is too nervous to name any note in its elegance. She is afraid to hail an empty room. She is afraid to raise her eyes and find she is alone. She is still more afraid to open the truth of her heart to the mockery of her young king.

“It is not every day a master among master growth-tenders petitions for leave to stand before me in silence,” he rumbles from somewhere in the general direction of the lamps around the hastily-arranged dais.

Nialet sighs. “I have never studied these rituals, O my King.”

“Leave the tending of patterns to me, l’vaisa. Come here. Sit with me.”

She winces, trapped. The room feels larger in the dark, without warriors at attention in the corners and two other petitioners kneeling in the middle of the rug. She is surprised to find he has abandoned the wide draped bench at the center of the dais to sit in lotus on a fat cushion at the edge of the shallow platform. 

In the hours since the open petition audience, he’s exchanged his black gilded armor, unbound hair, and War Crown for the red silk kurta and black sirwal, tidied his long hair into a simple three-strand plait, and strung the jade-and-topaz Crown of Ages on minish chain as a pendant, leaving only the topaz cabochon of his spirit gem upon his brow. Gold paint now accents his lips and eyes, and gold ornaments drip from ear and wrist and fingers with a tiny hint of shimmering bells as he gestures to the white cushion below his left hand. 

Nialet obeys, laying the box before him and kneeling on the cushion as he commanded. She fumbles through what she hopes is a salute, but the words fly out of her mind as soon as they fall from her tongue. She cannot weave proper words for beginning, let alone anything else.

“Enough,” he cuts in, waving a hand between them with a tiny shimmer of bells. “I do not grant petitions to hear my Names sung. There is no one else in this room - confess your worries to your king.”

“Doors don’t keep ears out,” she mumbles, tangling her fingers together in her lap.

“Hn,” he says, his golden eyes narrowing in amusement. At her expense. “I assure you, Legion gossip began at  _ sunrise. _ ”

“What the  _ Legion _ will say of a common autumn nobody laying a petition before the Great Ganondorf is only  _ one _ worry.”

“Clever,” he murmurs, his uncanny eyes somehow becoming even more intense. “Then we must endeavor to be  _ quiet _ , yeah?”

Nialet winces and drops her gaze to the floor in shame. Beytu is right. He enjoys tormenting people.

“Tea? Or chiba?” The Great Ganondorf waves a hand through the air as he rumbles softly, vanishing the box of tribute and conjuring instead a footed ebony tray laden with food and drink of many kinds.

Nialet stares at it, her tongue dry and stupid. The Great King has chosen one of the two matching celadon cups and seems on the edge of  _ actually pouring tea _ . For  _ her _ . It is too shocking - her tongue slips free of her efforts to rein it in. “I want a family.”

He merely raises a brow. “Such desires do not tend to fit in teacups.”

Nialet groans, and rakes her nails through her hair from temple to nape, hoping vainly to order her thoughts. “Forgive me, Sun’s Ray. Even in Agamedua we heard about the miracles of the Trial of Dusk, but no one ever said if the amali who drank the potions were young or - like me.”

“Chiba then,” he says, turning some of his attention to blending the herbs and elixirs. “The things you speak of belong to two wholly different concerns.”

“Maybe I want both,” she snaps, a little sharper than she meant to.

“Hn,” is all he says, pouring a little of the strong black tea into the mixture.

“Whatever tribute is proper for knowing if the Mother of Sands will ever grant this, I  _ will _ pay it. The cookies are only for beginning the question.”

“Beware the wicked wish,” he murmurs, offering her the steaming celadon cup. “What you ask for is  _ prophecy _ , and such knowledge is forbidden.”

Nialet sighs, politely tasting the chiba. Where the strong herbal astringence of the elixirs led her to expect heavy, Legion-style sharpness, his work is smooth and strangely soothing, coating her tongue in a silken, subtle, sweet earthiness.

“Hn,” he says, as if absorbed in some private thought as he pours another cup for himself which seems more or less the same as what he offered her. “While generally the word describes something difficult or disruptive to the established patterns, in this case  _ forbidden _ is a polite way of saying it is  _ impossible _ . You ask for a vision of a tomorrow that is unwoven - a tomorrow for which the warp has not even been laid on the worldloom. If you desire I spin such threads as  _ may _ support one or more of the patterns you name,  _ that _ may be done, but returns us to the morning’s question: if you will tame chaos to your Will, you must know the pattern you seek  _ before _ you spin the threads.”

“I bring that poor tribute solely to learn if it is even  _ possible _ for me to spin,” she says with a sigh.

“Stop naming it  _ poor _ . It is accepted, and therefore it is sufficient,” he says, a cold edge in his command.

“I am not good with people,” she stammers. “This is why I cannot be amali alone. No ilmaha should suffer in thin soil without the soft nourishment of the moon to give them strength.”

He clicks his tongue in censure, sipping his chiba delicately. “ _ Suppleness _ is grown in gentle oasis soil.  _ Strength _ is forged from the struggle on broken ground.”

“I’d rather go to the Ancestors with the victory of awakening a soft-hearted child who was  _ happy _ than a strong one who is  _ not _ ,” she murmurs to her cup. Her heart races wildly in terror of his wrath. She dances ever closer to treason, but she cannot speak to him of children without feeling her own rage kindle for the sake of the child  _ he _ once was.

“Sentiment is a deadly vice, Nialet.” He speaks softly, barely louder than the whispering crackle of damp lampwicks. Everything in the green country is damp, all the time. He says nothing more until both their cups are empty, and then his tone is returned to the smooth, sardonic purr that seems to have become his usual habit. “You should know it is among my powers to look into your spirit and know every desire and every sin you will not confess.”

“Oh,” she says, returning her cup to the tray and resisting the lure of the candied fruit slices. She is not  _ surprised _ , for it ties many loose threads in the conversation of her king. When other people would ask several questions to go from one place to another, he leaps in one. He is not  _ just _ a sharp wit - he weaves his pattern from secrets. She does not know what words to weave for that, with or without giving offense or provoking worse, but on the heels of that thought comes another more terrible:  _ he already knows that _ , and  _ still _ he chooses to hold the gentle guiding shuttle instead of the sharp finality of the blade. “Beytu is wrong.”

He smirks and turns his golden eyes on her again. “ _ Many _ people are wrong about a  _ lot _ of things, but few hold enough of any pattern to be  _ capable _ of right understanding. Fortunately for you, Kings are  _ always _ right.”

Nialet snorts reflexively - and  _ immediately _ clamps a hand over her traitorous mouth.

Ganondorf laughs, his eyes creasing at the corners again. “Enough distraction for one afternoon. I  _ do _ have more than one appointment this week - but my point is thus: I  _ can _ pull it by magic, but it nonetheless serves a purpose for  _ you _ to shape the words for the cry of your spirit. If it is a love match or a lifebond you want, I can arrange happy circumstances for such crossings of threads that  _ might _ give rise to the  _ opportunity _ , but the rest of the pattern belongs to the spirits who dance. The oldest of all divine laws guarding freedom of spirit are not something you want to see broken. On the other hand, if all you wish is a round belly, well.  _ That _ is a simple question of logistics, no more involved than your work of tucking seeds into Din’s sweet earth.”

Nialet glares at him. The choice of  _ that _ particular poetic phrase cannot be an accident.

“Hn,” he says, his mischievous grin answering her unvoiced rebuke.

“It is  _ not _ ,” she snaps. “I have tried before, and it has come to nothing. Many times. With  _ and _ without affection in the dance. It is for  _ this _ I come, it is for this I challenge your bloody  _ forbidden _ . I need the knowing of whether it is hopeless before I risk what is left of my heart pursuing  _ another _ partner who  _ may _ , at  _ best _ , make  _ peace _ with what I am, before I risk my pride sipping the wine of another festival with no embrace under the moon, before I spend the rest of my season taut as a drum as I hunt and wait and hunt and wait, praying for the smallest sign of the  _ possibility _ of new life.”

He tips his head as the grin fades, his golden eyes sharp and searching. “You have carried this stone a long time, l’vaisa.”

Nialet forces her back to straighten properly, her shoulders to square. It is foolish to paint wounds with shame. Even the Great King allows it to be seen that an enemy drew close enough to rip the earrings from his flesh, and yet he lives. “I have.”

He gestures, and a faceted bottle of King’s Tears appears on the tray among everything else. He choses a sugared Din’s Marigold from a heap of otherwise untouched delicacies, placing it in her cup. He holds the silence as he pours a thin measure of the powerful distilled spirit over the flower, drizzling such a thin stream that it coats every petal and still measures less than two fingers deep. He traces the rim of the cup with his finger, spinning a cobweb-fine pattern of lightning into the cup, shredding the bright blossom and blending it into a froth.

From the day he returned from the Sands with the sun on his brow, the People have grown hundreds of these flowers in his honor wherever they live. It is a common, hardy plant, both cheerful in appearance and useful in kitchen and stillroom, but the rich, pure orange double-petaled blooms are nonetheless especially sacred to Din as symbols of the passion and creativity that is in Her gift.

And now her king offers one to her in the most curious fashion.

“Drink,” he murmurs, holding her gaze as he returns the elegantly simple pottery to her hands. “Open your spirit to the mystery, and give this stone to me.”

Nialet hesitates. “Is forgetting always the price of easing pain?”

His lip quirks in a strange kind of half-grin, and he shakes his head ever so little. “Not unless you want it to be.”

“I don’t,” she says quietly. “Like the shadowed blade, the things I have forgotten only brought more pain.”

He nods, and his unsettling golden eyes seem full of secrets. “Give me the stone you carry, l’vaisa Nialet avadha Davayu, and I will transform it into  _ power _ .”

“I  _ can’t _ be amali alone. I am not enough,” she whispers, clutching the precious magic close to her heart. She  _ wants _ the unspoken promise it represents. She  _ wants _ to drink from the golden cauldron. She  _ wants _ to bring new and radiant life into the world.

“Stone first,” he counters, allowing his grin to blossom just a little.

The potion is sharp and pepper-blossom hot in the first breath, leaving cool sweetness behind as it kindles fire in her core.


	51. Chapter 51

Dawn rises warmer than the day before, thinning the mist early. Tender sprouts hesitate, and reckless ones surge forward. There is more than enough work in the small vegetable fields that Padda abandons her patrol at the second hour of afternoon to drag her back to the manor-keep. She will not hear any objection. The Great Ganondorf has commanded Nialet return at the hour of madness, and return she will.

“I can’t do it,” she groans at the younger woman. She is sun-path, and her spirit is the kind that thrives best in loud company. She cannot understand.

“Hylian habits aren’t contagious and you won’t persuade me they are. Stop being missish,” Padda counters, pushing her through the door into the room the Rahalin set aside for her. It has six narrow windows along the east wall, glazed in thick greenish glass. Accordingly, no one else wanted it, despite its luxury of a tiny private washroom and a sideboard inlaid with freezestone to keep a little bit of food safe from scavengers and spoilage in one. Like all Hylian homes, every door and furnishing is too small, but not needing to run the gossip gauntlet every time one’s body demands something is a rare treasure.

“ _ Gamontirre dorru _ \- I don’t even want to imagine what a Hylian would think of -  _ this _ . I can’t do it.”

“Why?” Padda bolts the door.

“I thought I could, but I  _ can’t _ , and that’s the end of it.” Nialat stands in the middle of the room with her head in her hands.

“ _ Why _ ,” counters Padda, shoving at her shoulder and pointing to the washroom. “Aside from you’re filthy and you have  _ one hour _ left to fix that  _ and _ find fresh pants.”

“I don’t even  _ have _ pants that actually qualify as  _ nice _ . I didn’t bring one stitch of festival stuff - I didn’t think there’d  _ be _ any on this side of the river, not where we’re working.”

“Too late,” says Padda. “Get washed, I’ll pick something for you. It’s not like what you wear to go upstairs is going to  _ matter _ , unless you know something about screwing that I don’t.”

Nialet sags against the doorframe, half in and half out of the washroom. “Sa’deasa, I  _ cannot _ do this. It’s too  _ weird _ .”

“Which part? That he’s  _ king _ or that you’re getting laid for the first time in, what, a decade? And  _ no _ , Risa doesn’t count. Bedding an Akash is fine if you want a massage, but for a proper  _ fuck _ you need a  _ warrior _ , avha.”

“Stop  _ saying _ that,” groans Nialet to the coffered ceiling. “If I’d known you would make yourself a nettleburr on this circuit I’d have tied  _ you _ to a post in the garden at home. That’s  _ not _ what I asked him, ok?”

“Maybe not in those words,” counters Padda with a shrug, scowling at the heap of clothes she’s pulled from the chest at the foot of the bed. “It’ll be good for you. Relax, let the Sun’s Ray rattle your bones back into proper order and burn the fog out of your head. I heard he doesn’t have another appointment until well after dinner tonight.”

Nialet closes the door between them and swears. The cramped washtub  _ is _ full of hot water, and whatever Ramal prepared the room laid for her a cake of marigold, citron, and memoryleaf soap - but that’s not the worst part. Hanging from the hooks on the inside of the door are two bright cascades of cloth - full-cut mistlinen sirwal and a thin silk caftan, both striped in cream and sage, the edges bound in a wide turquoise twill ribbon. From a distance, they  _ might _ appear simple, and the sirwal  _ might _ be mistaken for a slightly nicer version of her usual woad-and-goldenrod chimera-stripe evening trousers. if you didn’t know anything of such arts. She is lucky most warriors never bother.

“ _ Gamontirre ikhusa _ \- what have I done? Blessed Lady of Sands, kill me now.”


	52. Chapter 52

No god grants any mercy whatsoever. The hour of madness arrives while she is still hiding from her folly, while Padda curses her from the other side of a locked door. 

The striped sirwal and open caftan are both lovely and soft, cut cleverly on bias to soften the silhouette and elevate  _ simple _ to  _ aesthetic _ . The wrap-style bandeau he offered with it is a solid, essentially greenish chimera-weave exactly matching the stripes of the rest. The clothing suits her taste, it flatters her spare figure, and it is even more terrifying than his other gifts. 

If she wears it, she is accepting a closer and more personal connection than she would have ever dared to seek. 

If she does  _ not _ wear it, she insults him and rejects his benevolence. 

Padda does not know it exists - but one of the Ramal surely does. Her choice will be public knowledge the moment she leaves her rooms. Unless - he conjured it onto the door-hook after the Ramal finished readying the bath for her. But why would he  _ bother _ ?

Hammering on the outer door echoes. Padda answers, and Eidalu announces her purpose clear enough to be heard by anyone on the whole floor. Nialet is  _ late _ for her appointment, and Eidalu avadha Ramal comes to assist her with whatever duties ensnared her.

Nialet thinks fondly of running away, but there is not truly anywhere to run  _ to _ . She unlocks the door and burns with embarrassment when Padda exclaims in delight over her new clothes. She does not ask or even speculate about origin, merely berates her for hiding away her best, and shoos her off to follow Eidalu. 

The smug, blue-robed servant offers no conversation, but her elaborate bow when she opens the door to the king’s rooms is mockery enough. 

She is a fool, and everyone  _ knows _ her for a fool now, and there is no escape from it. The only path out is through.

As with the makeshift audience chamber, the king’s suite is heavily curtained and lit with soft, fragrant oil lamps. More of them burn this time, especially around the paired sofas set in a _V_ before the broad marble hearth against the north wall. No doubt these rooms once belonged to the Hylian master of the keep, but the few furnishings are blessedly Geld’o.

The Great Ganondorf leans against the mantle with reckless arrogance, as if the cheerful flames present no danger to his voluminous black caftan. Again he wears the Crown of Ages as a necklace. This time he tames his glorious hair with a complex enamelwork ornament made to match a tangled snake pectoral and heavy earrings. More jewelry peeks from under the banded cuff of the caftan, but his strong arms are folded over his broad chest, hiding any further detail.

“Vo’hei rajena,” she whispers, bowing. The door snaps shut behind her.

His golden eyes offer no hint of his thoughts as he nods to the low table laden with covered dishes and bright vessels. “Hungry?” 

“I can’t eat,” she confesses, tangling her fingers in the cuffs of her new caftan.

“I can see that,” he rumbles. “However.  _ That _ was not my question.”

Nialet sighs. “I don’t know. Probably. You?”

“Hn. Always,” he says, pushing away from the mantle and nodding to the sofas. “Sit with me, Nialet. The powdery mildew doesn’t seem to be responding to lime dust.”

The non sequitur tips her off balance. “The effectiveness is necessarily halved when rain washes it off every other night.”

“Can lye water be applied in stronger solution than usual to compensate for the wetter climate?”

“If we could be certain of  _ when _ the rain would break with enough time to scatter it in the hour or two directly before,  _ maybe _ . If the clouds veil the light enough to prevent burns,” she says, drifting a little closer against her better judgment as he pours tea in  _ two _ celadon cups.

“Hylian records from Trilby province mention the use of sulfur - because it is  _ there _ or because it  _ works _ ?” He offers her the cup with half as much King’s Honey. 

“A little of both - paired with leaf pulling it is even better, but we do not have enough hands to do more than slow the descent,” she confesses, baffled by his questions. He is a  _ War King _ , and these are mysteries of no concern to anyone but Davayu except as they beg simple labor from their sisters for harvest or planting or cutting out diseased things. 

And yet he continues the same thread. He lures her to sit opposite him as  _ he _ eats, and hands her this or that tidbit to taste as they talk of softlands parasites and the challenges which ride the eastern winds.

Nialet decides he must be dressed for the next petition, or maybe the one preceding. She went down to the gardens before dawn, and never bothered to ask how her king fills his mornings in any case. Padda must have been wrong about his appointments. 

She is brushing the crumbs of a third citron cookie from her hands when he asks about the bees. She cannot hide the wince of pain. He sits forward in more than interest - he knew it would be a sore point before he spoke. “Our golden sisters are not plentiful here, and their hives are both far from where we need them and wounded by parasites and poison. Hylians fear them, and it will take many seasons to persuade both sides to make peace.”

“What if the queen is persuaded earlier? Her sisters  _ will _ follow, but how long to move each hive within reasonable flight of the fields?”

“No use,” she confesses. “The nest will divide rather than follow a mad queen. There is no shortcut when negotiating with bees. Promising them safe food in only one season is not enough. We must be able to feed the hive all year with no sickness before they will trust a human - and forcibly moving a box of combs will only make it worse.”

“Fifteen percent production from the orchards and twenty-five from the gourd-vines is unacceptable,” he says with a shake of his head, but while he is somber, he is not  _ angry _ . “How many divisions do you need per hectare and how long to train them?”

Nialet frowns in confusion.

He gestures with a wry smirk, conjuring an elegant rosewood-handled writing brush into his fingers. He tips and twirls it as warriors play with their knives. “I have seen this mystery woven before.”

Nialet draws a sharp breath. “It is not  _ possible _ to pollinate so many fields by hand, Sun’s Ray, even if the whole Golden Legion were to try.”

“Every tree and vine in the Golden Fortress,” he insists. “Forty warriors, two days. Ninety-five percent of the healthy blossoms bear fruit.”

“There  _ isn’t _ enough food for bees there either, but you have help from dayflies nesting in the Lady’s Quiver migrating to the courtyards in spring, among others. The warriors are so successful there because they are  _ adding to _ the work of little sisters and because the walls are thicker and higher than most other fortresses, allowing for tamer winds and therefore less disturbance of the pollen,” she counters.

“How long must the winds be gentled?”

“Sun’s Ray -  _ please _ . The grain here  _ needs _ the wind to remain as it is. Tampering with the patterns by artifice is dangerous,” she pleads.

“ _ Life _ is dangerous,” he says, twirling the brush. “Nialet. You  _ know _ I have done the  _ impossible _ before. This very Davayu mystery inspired one such, when the Council  _ dared _ to tell me it was impossible that I would have any rightful claim as Thorn of Dusk for a  _ decade _ .”

She tangles her fingers together, watching him play with the little tool that he conjured to speak of breeding flowers. “I do not know much of magic. Is the brush an illusion? Did you weave it from empty air? Or - did it already exist and you summon it from somewhere else?”

His grin widens, and his bright eyes crease. “In this case, it is the latter. I  _ can _ do all of them, though the cost varies.”

“Which was it when you brewed potions for the eight?”

His smile fades, and his fingers still. 

Nialet holds firm against the impulse to take back the question, to apologize. “I swear before the Mother I will never betray the secret, and you may steal the memory back in the next breath, but I  _ need _ to know, at least for a moment. I don’t know how to feel about a constructed child, but an illusion would break my heart, Sun’s Ray.”

He says nothing, but he turns his gaze aside, as if he searches for words he dropped on the rug.

He  _ never _ breaks eye contact first. 

He is always the one staring through other people’s souls, arrogant and bold as a plainscat prideleader.

“You are very good at making people forget your youth,” she murmurs.

He snorts softly, his lip curling in distaste. “You are mistaken. The unraveling of memory is not  _ my _ habit.”

“But you  _ have _ done it,” she presses, knowing she winds the rope around her own neck.

He still does not look at her, and his fingers remain motionless.

“O my King - I  _ know _ I am just a highlands nobody - but I swear to you before the Old Ones I will guard your mysteries in this life and the hereafter,” she whispers, slipping off the sofa to kneel at his feet. “Please - is it... safe to speak?”

His eyes narrow, but it is neither mirth nor thought this time. His sharp features are colder with every breath. “I have no intent to harm you at this time, avadha.”

“No,” she says, folding her hands over her heart because though she dares greatly by challenging him - she does  _ not _ dare to touch him without leave. “Is it  _ safe _ to  _ speak-? _ ”

His brows draw down, and his golden eyes slew towards her slowly. 

She waits, and tries to ignore the disquiet in her stomach.

“You have a confession,” he murmurs.

She nods, wondering if he has already reached inside her spirit to know what proof of her loyalty she offers. She wonders if he wants her words as a formality, or if there is some other reason to weave it aloud.

He beckons her to rise up on her knees as he bows closer to her. The intensity of his gaze is frightening. His wide lips soften, and for a moment she is afraid he will kiss her. He tips his chin and shifts aside so his cheek  _ almost _ touches hers, and his breath tickles her ear as his beckoning hand slides down as if he will caress her arm, but his hand is a hairsbreadth from the silk of her sleeve.

“You have two minutes,” he breathes.

“We are watched-?”

“Always,” he purrs, moving his hands in a ghostlike caress. His manner and his words are hot and cold in the same breath.

Nialet screws her courage tighter, answering in the same way even though it makes her skin buzz with electric tension to whisper to her king as if to a lover. “I know you stole memories from wounded raiders twelve years ago. You missed one. Maike avadha Davayu of the highlands saw you in the courts of the Ashak with your honor knife bared, and fled to tell her Rahallin before you could work your way to her.”

“I  _ didn’t _ kill them,” he whispers, but she can feel the distaste in the shape of his lips  _ almost _ brushing her neck.

“You didn’t have to,” she says. “You tried to give them mercy from the horror of the fire, but Hyrule did too much. I don’t care to follow much gossip - but that one is important to my sisters.”

“It was a new spell in those days, slow, and not yet perfected,” he whispers. “Even so it does not  _ unravel _ a pattern but cuts a  _ damaged piece _ from the cloth to make way for the mending needle. What they saw and suffered was not  _ discarded _ , but preserved until I am at leisure to return it to the weaver.”

Nialet hums in thought - and no little temptation to cross the feather-fine boundary of touch. “You would have answered that differently without the magic you weave now.”

“Swift of wit as always,” he breathes, a hint of a wry chuckle in the words.

“As you say,  _ Rajenaya Chalut _ , who was born on the fourth day of a black wind on summer solstice in the place where the columns flower like the lotus.”

“Few remember that name,” he murmurs, his hands going very still.

“The omen that is forgotten does not cease to be, nor does it cease to bless us,” she returns softly. “None of us remember  _ much _ , but among nobodies our sisters are often all we have. A patchwork of scraps may still become a mantle.”

“Hn,” he says, the soft purr of it resonating in the softness under his sharp jaw as he weaves ever more agonizing mirage over their conversation. “There were many threads to the Trial of Dusk, each spun differently. Most were a matter of study and timing and health - and a magic brush, if you will. The only  _ illusion _ hid our sisters carrying seedlings their spirits couldn’t keep, until I mastered the way of transplanting for the two whose flesh could not be persuaded by brushes.”

“Would one of these bring a child to me?”

“That depends,” he murmurs. “Where is va’salet assigned?”

Nialet shivers as he almost-caresses her back. She carries tension from her work, and she carries the weight of so many old longings brought into the sun, and she carries the fretful strangeness of being so close to her young king. She can imagine too well how his broad hands might feel untangling the knotted threads in her flesh. “That’s the other reason I asked for a  _ prophecy _ , Sun’s Ray.”

“Hn,” he says, untangling himself from her, sitting back enough to look down at her as he brushes a thumb over her spirit gem. “Risa avadha Ashak being a starry oasis is not  _ quite _ the problem you think it is. Consider that the brush may mingle pollen from flowers divided by  _ mountains _ , but nonetheless the embrace of va’salet is the delicate nectar completing the pattern.”

“Oh,” she breathes, stunned by the power and subtlety of his magic. To alter the mystery of oasis and thorn so profoundly that they never need meet in flesh for a seed to become, to enable shy oases to become amali without either needing to reveal their shapes to strangers or to gossip, to defy tradition without being seen to challenge it at all-! “O my King - why must these wonders remain secret?”

“They would abuse it,” he says coldly, wry amusement scoured away in a blink. He sits back into his sofa, and reaches for his majir. He smiles with his lips, but his golden eyes are sharp and hard in a way she’s never seen before. “Consider it.”

Nialet sinks back on her heels and bows. He accepts the ritual salute with smooth arrogance, and toys with the sweets he  _ had _ been eating as she retreats. Her two minutes are over, and clearly so is the audience. She hopes she hasn’t broken protocol too gravely, or given some great offense - but his ambiguous parting words  _ could _ have been a rebuke or refusal for her presumption, and they weren’t.

The entire conversation chases itself around her head as she changes back into working clothes and returns to the gardens and fields, as she praises the triumphs of the Kharish at the evening meal, as she tries not to notice her king picking at  _ his _ plate while engaging wry conversation with the Rahallin, as she tries to persuade her body to sleep that night.


	53. Chapter 53

The weather continues warm and dry. The other Davayu give thanks to the gods, anxiously walking the grain fields and sharpening their tools. The few Ramal assigned to this manor-keep prepare the threshing barn and scour the huge unglazed amphorae again - they do not trust the river sand from this green country to be as clean as their home, even though it has been sieved and rinsed and baked in the sun and sieved again and baked again. 

Nialet is looking forward to a nap at the hour of madness, and her spirit plummets when she climbs toward her rooms and finds Eidalu spinning fine threads in the hall outside her door. She bows politely as she can manage. “Please tell my king I am thinking on His word, but I have made no decision.”

“Tell him yourself,” counters the smirking Ramal. “You can go up now if you like.”

“I do  _ not _ like,” says Nialet in horror, thrusting her dirty hands behind her back reflexively. “I can’t go before him like  _ this-! _ ”

“Nothing Himself hasn’t seen before - or  _ been _ before. You should have seen him in the battle at Diggdog last month, crown to toe, thumb’s thickness of mud and guts, took two days to get his hair clean enough to take his braids down to get the  _ rest _ .”

Nialet shudders. “Just because dirt isn’t  _ shocking _ doesn’t make it polite.  _ Gamontirre hakoumi _ \- had I known he would want an answer so soon-”

Eidalu laughs, winding more thread on her bright spindle. “You don’t know the Sun’s Ray, avha. You want my advice?”

“What I  _ want _ is a bath,” groans Nialet, pushing past her into the room.

Eidalu laughs again - and follows her inside, nudging the door closed behind them. “Upstairs bath is bigger, but suit yourself. I’ve served him four years, and most would tremble to make Himself  _ wait _ under four lanterns just because they didn’t feel ready.”

Nialet swears as she hastily scrubs her hands over the washbasin.

“Avha,  _ nobody _ ever feels ready, ok? He  _ knows _ you’re coming from the gardens. He knows your work, your spirit, your habits. You do yourself no favors trying to make yourself appear any different than you are.”

Nialet washes her face with a fresh cloth and curses the woman as she tugs a comb through her hair as quickly as she dares. There is no possibility she can be properly clean in time. “I don’t sit with my  _ own _ Council of Elders filthy unless we’re under attack. My very  _ clothes _ are  _ already _ such an offense he sent that mistlinen and honest-to-gods  _ silk _ for the audience I  _ expected _ yesterday! Why didn’t you  _ tell _ me I needed to report today too?”

“Didn’t  _ he _ tell you, yesterday? I didn’t know the first appointment was  _ you _ until an hour ago when he wanted to be shaven early.” She frowns, finishing the length of wool in her hands and winding it on. “I can say though: that’s  _ not _ why he finally summoned those things for you. Your petition gave him an excuse to get them out of the storeroom where they’ve been getting dusty for a year and a half.”

Nialet freezes.  _ Finally _ means they  _ were _ made to be given, and eighteen months ago, she sent Nephra east instead of taking his implied offer for herself. “I swear to you, the Sun’s Ray said  _ nothing _ about granting another audience.”

“Huh,” says Eidalu, brows raised. She tucks spindle and wool into a pocket of her hip-wrap and folds her arms, looking thoughtful. “If he doesn’t say anything today either, it’s safe to assume you’re first under four lanterns until he says otherwise.”

“ _ Gamontirre sravoe - why? _ ”

Eidalu shrugs. “He is king. In four years, I’ve only heard him explain a decision when showing the thread of his reasoning  _ is _ some part of the purpose behind it. My advice? Don’t expect that to change.”


	54. Chapter 54

The Great Ganondorf lounges on the same sofa as the day before, the low table laid with another feast. The black caftan is draped over the other arm of the sofa, and the soft lanternlight catches the subtle hint of thread-of-gold tucked into the brushed wool at the edges. He wears the same extravagant suite of enameled snake jewelry, though today a third of his upswept trailing twist is braided in tiny ropes, adorned with gold and green garnet and topaz. The delicate minish-chain and oblate discs of the Thorn Crown look well layered with the massed serpents. Today both high-necked kurta and flowing sirwal are thin black silk, adorned with deep, heavy borders of curving thistles and thornflowers rendered in every shade of sunlight, accented here and there with thread-of-gold and tiny topaz beads. His eyes are lined in gold again, and gold dust highlights his sharp cheeks and piercing eyes. 

The feast is untouched.

“Forgive me, O my king, for delaying your meal. I did not understand your Will,” she stammers, bowing.

“Hn,” he says, still leaning his head on his fist as he nods to the opposite sofa. “You delayed nothing. Speak to me of wheat, Nialet.”

She frowns. “Your servant said otherwise.”

“Her understanding will be corrected. The alarmingly red cake there is made from some local salad or herb or something, and I would have your opinion on that also.”

Closer inspection of the dish-like pastry reveals sliced thornberries and unidentifiable minced something in a honeyed slurry. It is tart and sticky and only vaguely sweet, but something in the mixture amplifies the flavor of the thornberries. She cannot decide if she likes it, but it is interesting, and she says as much.

“Hn,” he says, summoning his water cup to hand with magic. “Wheat.”

“What would my king wish to know? The highlands seed will not thrive here. Oats are better suited, even in Taobob, but the locals are still - adjusting. The unit stationed there didn’t know the difference in what the Hylians planted, and we didn’t get word in time.”

“Why not? Our wheat is always thirsty. Bringing it across the river should satisfy it and double the yield.”

“Many of our green sisters rot when the land is  _ too _ rich,  _ too _ wet,” she counters, settling in to explain the delicate balance of a Davayu’s work. He asks many questions, and he encourages her to eat and drink as she digs deeply into the  _ whys _ that shape the patterns of Growth, and explains the number of skilled hands and simple hands and sheer time investment necessary to achieve each ambitious purpose. It becomes quickly apparent that he has a respectable education in patterns wildly opposite of his own, that he calculates numbers swiftly and  _ remembers _ them, and he is deeply concerned with the  _ efficiency _ of their gardens and fields. He does not want the harvest of one year, but  _ many _ , and he is especially interested in dense foodstuffs that store well and can be produced in prodigious surplus within two years’ time.

He is letting Hyrule nibble back the land he’s taken, fighting them just enough to make them  _ pay _ for every mile.

His course isn’t chaotic at all.

The date of the invasion may perhaps have accelerated, but he was already planning the long arc of his conquest when he rode to the heart of her own battle against the gummy blight.

“It’s a trap,” she blurts, in the middle of a discussion about the skills and difficulty of training simple hands for binding and scything and threshing and milling.

Ganondorf raises a silent brow at the interruption.

“ _ Fuck, _ ” whispers Nialet, scrambling off the sofa to bow and and plead for forgiveness.

“Stop that,” he snaps, sitting upright. “Explain.”

“Forgive my presumption, Sun’s Ray, I just - saw the pattern. I will never speak of it, I swear. The archives of any master Davayu will hold these answers you desire, but our steward of records is particularly skilled at forecasting times and yields and supply to aid the work of Growth. Eiju will calculate more swiftly than I.”

“I said,  _ stop groveling _ . I will not ask three times,” he counters sharply. He props his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers together. “ _ What is a trap? _ ”

Nialet swallows hard, forcing herself to sit back on her heels and school her breath. She still cannot bear to look up at his face, so she focuses on the pattern embroidered at the cuff of his sleeve. “You only wanted this soft, wet southland long enough to make the Hylians look away from your target and exhaust themselves - and feed the  _ real _ campaign  _ two years from now. _ The year of the eclipse.”

“Hn,” he says. “You are not a warrior, nor a leader of warriors. Yet you dare to see a Pattern even my Exalted does not.”

“Am I wrong?” Nialet belatedly clamps a hand over her wayward mouth.

Ganondorf laughs. “You should have been a chief.”

His unexpected praise is even more unsettling than the epiphany. She dares to glance up at his golden eyes, for she  _ needs _ to know if his laughter is mocking. It isn’t. “What does my king desire that he designs a pattern so many years in weaving?”

He grins down at her, and plucks a ripe softlands plum from the table, summoning a knife through the ether to carve a thin, translucent slice from it. He lays it on his tongue, his bright eyes still narrowed, still fixed on her. “Everything.”

She watches him eat the entire plum the same way in a kind of daze, her thoughts whirling. It is the first food he’s touched in two hours of conversation. He did not answer her challenge directly, but his praise and shift of mood says she is right about his secret plans. He didn’t  _ want _ anyone to know, but in the same moment he is  _ pleased _ that she solved his puzzle.

The Great Ganondorf is always hungry. She has seen - and counted from her own storerooms - the prodigious quantities that fuel his body and his magic. When he is amused, he is always nibbling on  _ something _ . His appetite is notorious to the point that of all the tribute offered to him in petitions, the greatest measure of it is always rich, dense foods. As a child he was the despair of the Kharish for his perpetual thefts.

He stopped eating the  _ moment _ she confronted him about the memories and the eight miracles that made him Thorn of Dusk. Things  _ they _ abuse.

He struggles to eat when he is upset.

“Would you send a letter to Risa?” Ganondorf tosses the plum pit in the little waste bowl and licks the juice from his fingers. He reaches for a meat-and-cabbage stuffed pastry. “I will not open a gate if she is not needed here, but with the proper materials, a message is nothing, and will reach her within the hour along with a signal-disc by which I will know  _ her _ decision within  _ minutes _ . She  _ could _ join us all at twilight.”

“How much?”

“Hn,” he says, savoring the last crumbs of the pastry. “It is already paid.”

Nialet bows her head, embarrassed that her cheeks burn like a wayward schoolchild. “Risa is a good friend, and a dear sister.”

“ _ That _ was not my question,” he chides her, poking through the dishes on the table as if he cannot decide what to choose next.

“My king might taste the red tart. It might improve further with sweet cream, but even plain it is a piquant dish, and sour herbs tend to preserve well.”

“That is  _ also _ not my question,” he says, but his rumbling voice smiles at her, and a sidelong glance reveals that he is doing exactly that. “You want a family, yet you hesitate to grow this pattern with va’salet. You want a child, yet Legion gossip says you have not pursued a fertile thorn by any common means in  _ years _ , despite many handsome opportunities.”

“I wouldn’t call them  _ handsome _ ,” she grumbles.

“Hn,” he says, leaning against the cushioned arm of his sofa to savor the generous slice of thornberry and herb-stalk tart. “Tell me, what  _ is _ the ideal of beauty, Nialet?”

“You will miss your next appointment,” she warns him. If the nature and logistics of wheat can burn two hours as if it is nothing, such abstract philosophy will surely run until dinner.

“ _ Perhaps _ you are not acquainted with your petition-sisters. Or do you pretend not to know the law gives you precedence for some more clever purpose?”

Her cheeks burn again. She had  _ not _ marked his other petitioners at all, nor their requests, though given his dress, his minimal attention to sword-dancing, and the arrangement of his suite, some number of them must be embarrassingly intimate. His hint says  _ she _ is the eldest, and by tradition all intimate petitions are ordered by rank and age, that women like her with little bearing time left might drink of his most virile life energies, and those beyond bearing might embrace his skill when he is rested and fresh. She did not ask him that at all - but he chooses to arrange matters as though she  _ has _ . “To what wicked end do you give the Legion gossip that I - that a woman  _ twice your age _ rides a young stallion?”

Ganondorf  _ laughs _ . It is not  _ quite _ the wild bray of four years ago, but it is deep and carrying - and genuine.

Nialet is not sure that she appreciates being the butt of his joke. She  _ is _ relieved that he is  _ not _ angry with her, and knowing he enjoys even a brief moment of happiness is enough to leash her tongue when she would otherwise curse someone for making merry over her anger.

“I  _ enjoy _ avadha of  _ experience _ , yes,” he chuckles at last, leaning on his fist again to smile down at her. “But you will not make me forget your radiance just because you are too modest, vo’kalu. If you do not go soon though, I  _ shall _ be tempted to miss my next appointment and then they will  _ really _ envy you.”

Nialet swears.

He chuckles at her fury. “You rise before dawn, vo’kalu. I rarely retire until well after. Consider that in the same way  _ you _ do not wish to attend these little meetings wearing the fragrances of Din’s creation, perhaps  _ I _ do not wish to summon you when I am still finishing the thread of  _ my _ day. Besides, a little notoriety will bring more little bees to admire the blossom, and you might see your desires fulfilled with  _ remarkably _ little effort on my part.”

She does not have any words for that at all.

“Understand that if your presence - or the gossip which must inevitably arise from it - displeased me, no tradition howsoever vaunted would bar me from sending you away,” he says more gently, his eyes still creased in mirth. “Finish your tea, and consider yourself at leisure to meditate on our conversations, or linger here for  _ more  _ as you prefer.”

Nialet swears, provoking him to laughter again. Her tea  _ is _ getting cold after so many long minutes abandoned, but it still soothes a little of the tension brought by the sudden turn in the conversation. She watches an errant crumble of tea leaf drift in her cup, and remembers his question about the letter. Instinct  _ might _ pull away simply because ink and paper is a strange way to raise such deep questions about the pattern of a relationship. She tries to imagine that she is home, or that Risa had come with her to the East. She can imagine any number of  _ beginnings _ of conversations, but she cannot envision the heart of it at all. Her spirit draws back before the entire idea of asking her to commit to walk beside her as their ilmaha grows, or even just to nurture a seedling until they awaken.

“It is not that Risa would refuse,” she murmurs to the dregs of her tea. “She is everything good and kind, and she  _ has _ been a joyful companion. But. Healing is her vocation, and even her large heart is not enough for all of that  _ and _ a child.”

“You have an entire Legion of sisters to love the little bird alongside you, and even more moonhearted amali will embrace you both in the westlands,” he counters smoothly, as if they have been talking the whole time, as if she has  _ not _ wasted five minutes of royal audience in sullen silence.

“I am - not ready to make  _ that _ decision, Sun’s Ray, but there will be no need for letters.”

“Hn,” is all he says in return, but his golden eyes follow her as she retreats, and secrets upon secrets burn within.


	55. Chapter 55

A fourth dawn rises warm and dry. Nialet rides the border of every field, touching the feathery green-gold grainstalks of the oats and the subtle bristles of the tiny seedheads in the grassy hayfields. The Hylians argued with her when she ordered the overplanting of their wheatfields, and they argued about the mixing of seeds, and today they are arguing about the final construction of the helm-frames where the dried hay will be stacked above little sheds and sheltered by a conical roof of light poles and rawhide. They have known the design for months, they set the poles and stretched the skins and wove the wattles of the shed walls, but  _ today _ , they argue. They are certain the dry weather will not hold, they are muttering about ignorant bandits cutting fields too green, they are resentful that their labor today will be wasted tomorrow when there is no hay to stack.

Nialet is tempted to tell them  _ why _ they are fools, but the Legion does not seem to guess that the Great Ganondorf has arranged the winds to his design either. It is not her place to speak for him. If he wanted it known that his magic assures them a prosaic victory, he would say it.

She returns to the manor-keep at zenith to wash and drink tea in solitude. At the hour of madness she will climb to the highest floor and once again go before her king. He will challenge her, he will ask her about planting and soil and weather and seed. He will command her to search her spirit for the root of her desires.

She longs for the deep and lasting love of spirits entwined, for her spirit to flower in the embrace of a beloved, and to  _ know _ her beloved flowers in  _ her _ company also. It is foolishly romantic, perhaps, but when her yearmates were swooning over beauty and glory and pleasures, she held her tongue on her own quiet wish. With time the wish became an ache, became a yearning, became the wistful longing that plagues her spirit still. 

Some poets speak of love as a suddenness, as a surprise, as opening doors and skyfire bolts. Others sing of hidden waters and deep roots, of building strongholds with mountain granite and patient vigilance before the slow dance of the wandering stars. When she was young, she laid her hopes on the altar of the former. She cannot remember when her devotions moved to the latter, but those prayers eroded to ghosts of habit long before she met Risa. 

The betrayal of her soft Hylian eleven years ago was like a vengeful mudslide that tears even ironvine from its place. She did not  _ love _ him, but she  _ was _ fond of him. A part of her had hoped that when his promises of settling his own farm with her came to fruition, it would feed  _ her _ spirit enough to set blossom and  _ become _ love.

Nialet sits with the grief of her lost faith, and wonders if that kind of love is even real at all, or if it is just a fable to guide the fiery stirrings of the young into faithfulness and compassion.

“He will know,” she says to the regimented garden below her windows. “The pattern of the king is woven to touch  _ all _ golden threads. Mortal, immortal, living and dead. Maybe it is forbidden to speak of  _ individual _ spirits - even I cannot  _ know _ the fate of a single seed or plant or blossom, but the larger patterns of  _ many _ green children together  _ can _ be learned and recorded and foreseen. If I am wasting time looking for water in a stone, he will know, and then it will only be a question of how and whether the vine can bear fruit.”


	56. Chapter 56

Eidalu smiles when she climbs the stair at the hour of madness. She is spinning fine threads as always, but today her vicuña wool is a layered shade of pale green that challenges even the most masterful dyers. The door opens by magic as on the first day, and the same golden lanterns burn the same fragrant oils, but the curtains are drawn back to allow the afternoon sunlight through the shutters. The Great Ganondorf is nowhere in sight.

Nialet approaches the paired sofas and the low table, frowning at the emptiness of untouched cushions and a single tray with clean tea things ready for service. She forces down the panic that she misunderstood him  _ again _ . Eidalu expected her. The door opened. A cheery fire burns in the hearth. Perhaps it is only that the Kharish are late with his breakfast, or perhaps he was later in rising, or perhaps he was called away to speak with his Rahallin or-

Double doors designed to blend into the paneled wall beside the hearth open suddenly, and the Great Ganondorf stands in silhouette against eerie blue-green light. He says nothing, but his gesture is a clear command. 

Nialet draws a deep breath and moves closer. His eyes seem especially strange reflecting colored lights, while his dark clothing absorbs all of it, making his body seem to be cut from the deepest void. She bows, but cannot make her tongue weave more than  _ O my king _ .

“When you enter this room, you belong to me,” he rumbles, cold and fierce. “No law nor tradition nor debt exists beyond this door but  _ my _ Will. Do you understand?”

Nialet nods, swallowing the seeds of a new and unfamiliar fear.

“From the moment I close these doors, you must do everything exactly as I say and speak  _ only _ absolute truth. No matter what I ask. Cross this veil and you surrender all freedom to my keeping until it pleases me to release you again. If you cannot bear these laws-?  _ Leave. _ ”

There is no point asking  _ why _ he commands this choice of unknown absolutes. Eidalu warned her not to expect explanations from him. The Trial he lays before her is worse than leaping into a canyon, for at least with a canyon, you can measure the drop, the rocks, the river, and have some reasonable idea what fate holds at the bottom. The weird blue-green light seems to catch in ethereal mists, obscuring any possible furnishings. A bottomless chasm could open in the floor three steps ahead and she would not be able to see it.

His purpose is as hidden as the dark moon.

Surrender is a fitting word.

The hinges are silent, and the thump of the doors closing is muffled, maybe by the mist. The rug under her feet is smooth and dense, cushioning noise but offering no plush comfort. She is not sure how far she should walk, for he is silent as the locks and latches click faintly. The world seems to tip and wobble for a moment, and the lights flare, but a breath later her balance returns, and the mist begins to settle lower, revealing dozens of tiny greenish-blueish glass lanterns strung on cables from the ceiling.

“Good,” he says quietly from behind her. His voice is still spare and cold, and his tread makes no sound at all as he stalks around her to lay his broad hand on the crown of her head. He does not look at her, but stands in profile, a shadow in the shape of a man.

She tries to ask his wish, but her tongue  _ will not  _ voice the words.

“The spell I weave for you now is a veil. Anyone with spiriteyes who seeks to know your mind and heart and past will see this, and  _ only _ this. Your truth remains sacred, and it remains yours, but understand that if you voice a truth running counter to the veil and someone seeks your spirit to confirm your truth?  _ They will see the veil as truth and take your word as the illusion. _ ”

“Yes, O my King,” she whispers.

He exhales tightly, and rolls his shoulders. His sharp profile reveals nothing - and no jewelry whatsoever reflects the eerie lights, not even the perfect topaz of his spirit gem. His rumbling dark voice tickles her ears, and his touch is warm and gentle. “Do you want to see the Work? Absolute truth.”

“As my king desires,” she stammers.

“That is not  _ quite _ what I asked. Your loyalty does you credit, Nialet avadha Davayu. This Work will not be pretty, and I neither require nor ask that you bear the knowledge or memory of its pattern. This is your choice, and your choice alone.”

Nialet worries her lip between her teeth, contemplating his soft warning. He demanded her absolute obedience to his will, then immediately extended a free choice. His spell isn’t just a secret and an illusion: it is painful, and it is  _ dangerous _ . “ _ You _ would then bear the ugliness alone, my king, and already you carry the stone that makes this terrible pattern necessary. No. I will share it. However dreadful.”

He shakes his head, and opens his uncanny eyes to look down at her. “You may feel that you are falling, and you may feel pain. Resist me, and it will be worse.”


	57. Chapter 57

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please to be reading tags before proceeding, thank you!

Nothing could ever have prepared her for the visceral intensity of his magic.

One slender thread of thought remains apart, observing with a kind of muted horror as he seizes her in his rough hands, pinning her arms and forcing her off balance. His eyes shine a baleful yellow-green, and his spirit gem awakens as a searing orange coal on his brow instead of the sunrise topaz it should have been. She sees it for only a moment, and then his mouth is on hers, his tongue is slithering over hers, his sharp teeth bruise her lips. 

She can smell the herbs in his hair oils and she can smell the soap his rough wool clothing was washed in.

As if the People would  _ ever _ send second-grade, uncombed, rough-spun desert twisthorn wool to clothe their king.

That discordant note shivers through the thread of her, rooting her in the real as the rough hands of the veil-king move over her body. She stumbles, and he pushes, he advances over her, pressing his strength into her flesh so she must retreat or fall. Their footsteps make no sound, their clothing makes no sound, but her ears are full of his breath, his beastly grunt and growl as he overpowers her.

She wonders if he has woven a bed behind her, or if he will take her on the floor, or against a wall she cannot see through the eerie mists.

She is stunned by the power of his weaving, but she is not surprised by the shape.

“Hn,” he says, breaking the kiss to press his brow to hers. His shocking gentleness lasts barely more than a heartbeat, and then he is bowing and pushing and biting at her neck as a plainscat subdues a hesitant mate.

She is amused how long he threatens and gropes and moves her across the misty room before he  _ finally _ pulls her caftan from  _ one _ shoulder.


	58. Chapter 58

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, please read _all_ the tags before continuing.

Nialet grinds the rough linen sheet in her teeth, distantly amused by the detail of the weave on her tongue and the soggy cling of the cloth over lip and chin and cheek as she races after her breath. Her wrists ache from his powerful grasp, her shoulders ache from the awkward pose, and the tug of sweat-soaked clothing bunched and twisted aside in lustful purpose is distractingly accurate. 

In the moment, such things might seem expedient, and for the one taking, maybe they remain so. He used the cloth as leverage briefly, not that he needed to, with his powerful grasp on her hip. He wove the pressure and roughness of a bandeau twisted around one’s ribcage with too much familiarity for him to not have known it himself at some point. He even wove the jarring pull and ache of a thrust moving through the body and breasts, but he forgot - or does not know - how to scale it to match the softness or spareness of the flesh, or how the ache and tenderness makes pressing one’s chest against the bed not a relief but a further torment, and lingers long after.

It is another tiny discordance plucking at her spirit. She tries to ignore it. She suspects her awareness of the veil may weaken it.

Sweat trickles down her spine, his and hers. He bows over her, groaning softly as he rocks his hips against hers. The clinging snap of damp skin is right, but the weight is not striking in  _ quite _ the right place. The taut pull at the join of her thighs from the way he forced her knees wide when he pushed her onto the bed platform is too sharp, where the pressure and friction of her knees resting on the wooden ledge is too light. Lotus is comfortable for her, and she spends many long hours crouching in the fields and gardens - but her  _ knees _ object to bearing her weight long without some cushion.

Her veil-king tugs on her hair, and it  _ hurts _ as his sweaty hand pulls a strand here and there harder than others. He shifts his other hand from her hip to her shoulder, pressing her deeper into the bed, pinning her in place for the final deep thrusts he needs. He growls some unnecessary demand, claiming her body and telling her in threatening tones how his milk will fill her womb, how his seed will drive deep into her flesh, how his plowing will spoil her for anything less than his own glory.

Nialet hums in amusement at his theatrics, contemplating the masterful detail of her veil-king. The nuanced pressure moving inside her in a rhythm  _ she _ didn’t have to set or contort her limbs to achieve is a piquant little taste of pleasures she is rarely able to enjoy anymore. The shape isn’t quite right, but she will happily ignore  _ that _ to enjoy the wallowing wet silkiness he gives her without needing to lose even a single grain of fullness.

The sharp sting around the gates says her veil-king split her tender flesh in his vigor, and many times in the stripping and plowing he struck her hard enough she would wear a bruise.

And yet.

The rolling undulation of his hips is gentle and graceful. 

Her veil-king pushed into her in one measured stroke when he finally wrestled her into the bow of the conquered and spread her flesh wide. 

And yet.

Within moments he  _ forgot _ he was supposed to be plowing her selfishly. He caressed and teased, rousing her interest and her appetite with small tastes of his heat as if he was still persuading her gates to embrace him. It is  _ fascinating _ , the sensations her king lavishes attention on, turning what he knows in his own skin to what he imagines she would feel in hers.

She wonders if he knows what effect the veil is beginning to have on her.

He must.

There are parts of the pattern that remain unsettling. Some of them are so intensely real they hurt her heart - less because he weaves them over her, than that he  _ knows _ the physicality of fingers forced into his mouth against his will to keep his head turned and his jaw from closing as another fist descends on his back in methodical progression. She does not like knowing that her king has begged for pain to stop until his throat is scoured and raw, and she hates knowing that he bears the weight of such desperation to  _ breathe _ freely and clear the drool and snot from his face for  _ five minutes _ that he would promise to  _ be good  _ for ten, for fifteen, for  _ twenty _ after that. 

And these are the least of the agonies with which he weaves a most intimate veil. 

As terrible as he promised the pattern would be, she cannot help but notice that even in the intimately visceral details he pulls the blow. The veil-king  _ says _ he will not be satisfied with a hundred strikes, and her king weaves  _ six _ before he is moving on to the next torment. The six are, of course, deeply horrid and hatefully specific. Nonetheless, he cuts  _ every _ sadistic thread short.

She longs to hold and comfort him, but he is not finished. 

_ Almost _ , but not quite. As if he struggles to focus on the completion of the pattern, as if it is difficult for him to imagine what she would perceive when he climaxes.

She spits out the sheet and pants for breath. The weaving is  _ very _ thorough there, but he has forgotten her throat is supposed to be raw. He has forgotten she is supposed to be  _ unable _ to cry out anymore. She is not sure if she can influence the pattern - of if she should. 

She  _ is _ certain she wants it to be  _ over _ .

“ _ Do it _ ,” she rasps. “Ride to your fucking glory. Hard. Fast. Tear more furrows for your seed to root and pour my belly round with milk.”

He startles, and a pressure on her brow shifts, but she has lifted her face from the bed and nothing is against her brow  _ to _ press.

“ _ Faster _ ,” she rasps.

He leans harder onto her shoulder, and the pressure against her brow increases again. He interrupts his smooth rhythm to increase it by half.

“ _ Harder _ .”

He grunts, and lengthens the stroke.

“ _ Faster _ .”

He groans, and he untangles his fist from her hair to spread his hand across her other shoulder. He shifts the angle of his hips to be driving down into her, peeling their thighs apart so he can do as she says.

“You are close,” she hisses. “ _ Harder. _ Roar for me, my king.”

He does  _ not _ roar, but  _ whimpers _ , teeth clenched. His hips slam against her, and with every beat she taunts him. The pattern is fraying - she commands him to come.

Her veil-king obeys, gasping in desperation as he throbs violently and pours himself into the pattern.


	59. Chapter 59

Nialet opens her eyes to soft golden light from a single lamp. Her tongue feels wrapped in wool and tastes of bile. The sharp sweetness of fresh bloodlime tickles her nose. The mist is gone, the eerie lights are gone, and the rugs under her aching feet are bright with the patterns of home. 

Not one thread of her clothing is out of place.

The room isn’t much larger than her own. Black silk drapes every wall, and stretches across the ceiling, fixed with golden pins. The platform bed to her left is enormous, and the wooden ledge all around is set with heavy iron rings. A mound of violently colorful black-bordered cushions at the head overflows onto the floor. 

A vanity table with the small mirror draped in quilted black silk stands against the wall to her right, with a plate of peeled bloodlime slices and an ewer of water. A backless sofa of intricately carved spicewood stands in the middle of the room. In the far corner two armor stands hold gilded black steel plate and boiled leather, respectively. Dozens of bright chests march down the wall.

The Great Ganondorf sits upon one of the largest, turned away, his back bowed, his fists pressed against the lid. A scrap of black silk pokes out from the seam, as if something was thrust into the chest in haste. He wears not a single ornament, and his hair is bound in a simple low queue, though her veil-king wore  _ his _ in hundreds of tiny beaded plaits - no doubt so the veil would hold a memory of heavy beads striking her flesh. His sharp profile reveals nothing of his thoughts.

Nialet screws in her courage, and crosses the room to stand at his side. “May I speak, my king?”

His lip curls in distaste. “I have no further design t-”

“No,” she cuts in, daring to rest her fingertips on his shoulder. “Is it  _ safe _ that I may speak?”

“Ah,” he says, expression smoothing back to the blankness of before. “The skyglass is sealed. If the rest is not enough, it is already too late.”

“ _ Savai Deasa Ikhusa _ ,  _ va’Rajena, _ ” she sighs, stroking his shoulder. “The stones you carry would surely crush the spirit of anyone else. I  _ am _ honored to behold your strength - but what have I ever done that you weave this painful shield for  _ me _ ?”

His sharp jaw twitched  _ maybe _ two degrees toward her when she moved her hand over his kitten-soft black vicuña kurta. Now his golden eyes slide from somewhere in the middle distance to stare at her plain kidskin indoor shoes. His tone is flat and cold. “There is no amount of service which will purchase my favor.”

“This is not a pattern you weave for just anyone,” she presses, stilling her hand over the dense curve of his shoulder. “You asked for absolute truth. I  _ know _ the veil is more than misdirection of Legion gossip and another thread for the fierce reputation of my War King. I desire to hear why you weigh it necessary  _ now _ , for  _ me _ .”

He  _ winces _ . He looks away. “It is important that you live to dance your pattern.”

“There are hundreds of other Davayu who would happily assure your warriors are fed. What does my king desire of  _ me,  _ that he bears more suffering for my sake?”

“As I said,” he murmurs, still avoiding her gaze. “It is important you live.”

Her heart twists in pain. Everyone has lost  _ someone _ to plague or war or hunger or sorrow. That her king pierces his own heart to guard  _ her _ life under a veil of callous, cruel, sadistic lust whispers of how many  _ he _ has lost to  _ they who watch _ . Whoever and whatever  _ they _ truly are. Their few amiable conversations are barely the foundation of a  _ friendship _ between newly acquainted sisters, and already he anticipates dire risk for her if  _ they _ see he wants anything from her but cold service and fresh prey to torment.

The cold killer Beytu sees in her king is a miasma of the sorrows he has himself endured, and a  _ veil _ , clothing him in a seeming of wickedness and tyranny to appease or deflect the attention of  _ they who watch _ . Either they desire he becomes it, or it is the only way to deflect their cruelty from someone close to him. Or both. She no longer wonders why the defiant witchchild bore the pain and struggle of nightly escapes in silence and always seemed to move alone, why the king confides his reasons to no one and keeps no close advisors but his Rocs and Exalted.

“Who does it serve for the Sun’s Ray to burn? What makes the year of the eclipse a propitious moment for conquest?”

“Hn,” he says, a corner of his lip twisting in bitter amusement. “What flaw in the stars sent your spirit to awaken in a nothing little hiccup of a village in a dusty little  _ pockmark _ of a valley in the highlands? What joke of the gods arranges that I must  _ give thanks _ for a pathetic speck of foreign parasitical  _ fungus _ for the crossing of threads that brought your radiant spirit into my life?”

“Perhaps my king would consider: it is  _ not _ a flaw,” she murmurs, wrestling the temptation to wrap him in her arms. “You know better than anyone - sometimes it is safer to be a nobody. Perhaps it is a small Mercy of the Mother herself that a humble thornoak stands in the desolate place where my king needs shade and comfort.”

“Your loyalty does you credit vo’kalu,” he rumbles gently. He does not look up at her, but raises a hand to lay over hers. “You - should go now, or I  _ shall _ be soon tempted to miss my next appointment.”

“Mm,” she says, layering her other hand atop his. “Will you eat breakfast with her?”

He snorts in derision. “That would be one way to describe the  _ work _ she seeks. Not that I  _ mind _ duties of that nature, especially for bright spirits. She is soft and kind, and if you  _ dare _ to tell her I  _ might _ be hungry-”

“She will bury you in cakes until you  _ eat something? _ I like her already,” teases Nialet, pressing his hand. “I trust my king to guard the People without question, but  _ since _ he commands absolute truth? I do  _ not _ trust him to guard  _ himself _ , nor can I trust a stranger with the task. By law I may claim your time and vital energies, and so claim them I shall. I will  _ not _ relinquish you to our sisters until I have seen you replenish the energies you spent in  _ this _ Work.”

He shakes his head, tipping his chin to look up at her sidelong. “In truth, I am more  _ tired _ than hungry. Veils are less a question of raw force than time and finesse.”

“Did you eat at noon?”

“No, but the preparations for-”

“Did you eat at dawn?”

“ _ Nialet- _ ”

“Did you  _ perhaps _ devour some magical midnight feast?” She raises a brow, steadfast against his exasperated excuses.

“You  _ dare _ to bully your king-? I will  _ eat _ when it damn well  _ pleases me _ to eat,” he snaps, rising to loom over her.

Nialet does not surrender his hand. “Fetch the Traitor’s Scourge if it so please you.  _ I do so dare. _ ”

He bristles with temper, his uncanny golden eyes bright and piercing. His hands clench into fists, and the one she has captured threatens to crush her fingers. For a moment he seems to balance on the edge of fury - he tucks his other fist under her jaw, knuckle digging uncomfortably into the soft flesh and the press of his thumb on her chin ungentle as he forces her to tip her head back and look up at him.

She braces for another shout, boldly meeting his eye.

He huffs in frustration - and bows to kiss her. 

It is not the needful, forceful claim of the veil-king. It is not the silken mastery of the mirage he wove to turn aside suspicious eyes before. It is the darting theft of a freshly Named youth fumbling to spin from childish daydreams a tangible connection. 

His soft lips press hers for only a moment, but he lingers close in the awkward half-bow to touch his brow to hers. He says nothing. His breath is shallow and quick. His eyes have slid half-shut. His skin is flushed with new heat. 

“Setta is going to kill me slowly for this,” she mutters.

“Hn,” he says, shifting to nuzzle her hair like a horse or a cat. His hand opens to ghost down the side of her neck and rest lightly on her shoulder. “You  _ always _ smell like your garden. Not just  _ a _ garden,  _ yours _ . I can never quite - pin down what scent it is that makes it so distinct. It’s just -  _ green _ . A hundred, a thousand different soaps, and I cannot find the one you use.”

“One might wonder how long my king has been looking,” she says carefully, throat tight.

“Long enough for Setta to box  _ my _ ears,” he rumbles with a wry chuckle, untangling his other hand from hers. “How is she?”

Nialet winces.

“It’s alright vo’kalu - I  _ know _ her grief is unlikely to heal completely, at least in this life. Ardin’s death was - very bad, and she - my attention was divided at the time. I could not shield her from it. I  _ had _ hoped if I poured  _ everything _ \- that is, my weaving was not - enough. For what would have needed to become. To spare her. And I - would have stolen the memory but - she dressed Ardin for the pyre because I - was away - and - there was too much damage to cut it all and - still have any cloth.”

“ _ Oh my king _ ,” Nialet sighs, grabbing his soft kurta. She pulls him close, giving up on all proper everything to wind her arms around him and lay her ear over his racing heart. He is trying  _ so hard _ to be cold and objective, denying his own grief over Ardin’s death and his inability to undo the tragedy. “I wish my sisters could understand your mercy.”

“I do not need anyone to understand anything,” he counters, his hand tightening briefly against the join of neck and shoulder. “I need only loyalty and integrity and skill.”

“Horseshit.”

He snorts in wry amusement, cupping both shoulders in his strong hands, chaste and gentle. “Anyway. At least she is safe. It is too little, too late, but one grain is more than none. Tell me - does she find any comfort in the embrace of her sisters? In the routine of farm life? Has Risa been able to temper her drinking?”

“A little, I think. She is quiet and withdrawn, but she is civil to me and to Beytu, and that is as much forgiveness as I think I can hope for.”

“ _ You-? _ ” He pushes her away, scowling down at her from a full arm’s length. “What have  _ you _ to do with any of it?  _ Nothing _ . It is well for her she is Ardin’s only living bloodkin or I  _ would _ have her whipped for such deplorable-”

“I invoked the laws of bonding,” says Nialet with a shrug. “Against her wish I prepared her ilmaha to seek their Name. At the time I weighed it better that they  _ not _ die in the attempt. She will never forget that I freed her child to seek you.”

“Ah,” he says, clenching his jaw. “Ardin spoke of the tension between them. She refused to be the first to bend, even when I brought her amali to see how her spirit thrived with a wider audience to admire and feed her music. The pattern was - unfortunately cut short.”

“Mm. Perhaps she will understand your design someday, perhaps not. She has always been deeply tied to  _ tradition _ as her amali and vaba taught it to her. She forgets what she was like as a youth, and forever thinks the young are  _ too _ young, for  _ everything _ . For her - Ardin could have been  _ five _ years older instead of one and a half, and still she would have called you wicked for even  _ looking _ at her child for more than half a minute. To me - you were nearly yearmates. While no one UnNamed could know themselves well enough yet for a lasting bond, a little crush and foolheaded adventure is natural enough.”

He pulls his hands away as if the touch burns him. He takes a half step back. Her king  _ retreats _ , expression blank, his tone flat. “It was not ideal to allow you the choice to see the abhorrent, unnatural veil, but it can strengthen the efficacy if the bearer can move with it, and it is important that you live to dance your pattern.”

“That is  _ not _ what I said.”

His lips curl in false mirth. “The precise words are irrelevant.  _ Autumn and young stallions. _ I understand your meaning perfectly.”

“ _ Gamontirre ikhusa _ ,” she groans. “This is why I cannot be amali alone. This is why I need a moon-path heart to embrace any ilmaha the Mother in her mercy might  _ finally _ send to me. If I cannot make myself understood by the most brilliant star in the heavens, what hope have I of guiding a child?”

“Flattery is unnecessary, and you are mistaken on  _ all _ of the rest,” he counters, slicing his hand through the air between them. “A faceted gem is not lesser than a round one, a pointed crystal is no less a complete pattern than a glass sphere, an oak is not flawed because it is not an apricot! You have all the makings of not a  _ good _ amali but the  _ best _ kind of amali. Already your heart overflows for a spirit who is not yet woven, and you do not hold some pattern ready to capture them in, but await in vigil to admire what they choose to become. You love your sisters so well you think of filing their bowls with the best things not today, not tomorrow, but  _ years _ from now. You love your sisters so well you set aside what they want to hear and say to them what they  _ need _ to hear, despite the difficulty and personal cost. You place the balancing of life - not just human life, or just green life, or just animal life, but all of them - above the demands of law and tradition when the need is great.  _ I know your spirit.  _ Ask me for a beloved, and I will search the world for hearts that would compliment your radiance. Ask me for a child and I will  _ make _ it become. Do  _ not _ ask me to accept this  _ trash _ you were persuaded to believe of yourself by ignorant, insignificant-”

He cuts  _ himself _ off when Nialet catches her hand between hers. He huffs in frustration.

“Beryl is no less natural because it is  _ rare _ ,” she says quietly. “When did you last sleep, my king?”

“Irrelevant,” he snaps.

“Incorrect. Your temper is rarely so short as this,” she chides him, pressing his hand. “The words for autumn and winter avadha who seek spring lovers are not kind ones. Our patterns are divided by form and tradition and time. Though  _ they who unravel _ made certain few of us remember who or what you were in the days before you took your Name, I was  _ there _ when our Rajenaya awakened, and the others  _ will _ frown on me for embracing you this way.”

“I do not  _ care _ ,” he snaps, pulling away and clenching his fists. “Let them frown. They do not  _ matter _ . Nothing beyond those doors exists when you are  _ here _ . I am King. I am the beginning and end of your Law. I  _ command _ you to confess the truth of your heart, without respect to the petty claims or foolish opinions of anyone else.”

“Why? My king has the right and power to  _ take _ whatever he desires,” she reminds him, studying his cold expression. 

“ _ I am King _ . I don’t have to explain myself to you or anyone.”

“And yet,” she counters quietly, standing firm before his ill-temper. “Even here, you  _ ask _ one already surrendered to any and every command.”

He drops his gaze, his fists still tight. “Let it be enough that irrespective of what must be  _ out there _ \- I don’t - that a pattern is  _ possible _ and that I am capable of weaving it  _ to perfection _ in spirit and in flesh does not mean I - care for the taste of -  _ that  _ thievery.”

“That is a  _ beginning _ at best,” she says, discomfited by his hesitant and almost shameful admission that he  _ doesn’t _ like to devour the spirit or command pleasures even after securing a petitioner’s obedience. As if he thinks he should. As if he believes it is expected that a King be indifferent to the desires or objections of one  _ he _ desires. As if he is persuaded his distaste for inflicting the thousand kinds of harm he was trained in is a weakness. “Words unspoken are  _ often _ known to you,  _ without _ the elaborate and boundless submission you command here.”

“Surface thoughts and dreams are one thing - to travel deeper into a free soul without leaving any trace requires I strengthen my focus and draw from reserves I - had prefer not to apply to - a search of this kind. Spiritroads go both ways. I will never again yield to the temptation to leave careless pathways for powers only I can handle.”

“They who watch?”

He tips his chin, then shakes his head no, hinting at complications and nuance he cannot bear to reveal. He pulls his gaze even further away from her. Her king  _ hides _ , fumbling to shield his heart - not only to guard  _ himself _ from further pain, but  _ her _ from knowing his truth. “Anyways it’s  _ different _ . Things you won’t confess even in safety don’t - quite mean the same.”

Nialet considers his words and manner, remembering his rebuke on the day her petition began: this time his emphasis is not on the purpose it serves  _ her _ spirit to shape words, but a hint toward deep cravings of his own. She considers his rare laughter and his perpetually sardonic mannerisms, his indulgent affection for his spoiled warmare and a litter of helpless kittens, his ruthless tactics and his vehement independence, the explicit sadistic dominance woven into the veil-king and his own hesitant, guarded attentions.

He hungers to be  _ wanted _ even more than he craves tenderness, maybe even as deeply as he hates needing anything from anyone or anything.

“Who carries stones for my king? Who drags him by the ear to the kitchens when he forgets or pretends not to notice he is hungry? Who hauls him to bed and pins him to the cushions in idleness until he surrenders to sleep - or at least sleepleaf? Who holds  _ him _ in  _ his _ grief and rejoices in his happiness? Who binds his wounds? Who hears his confessions? Who comforts  _ his _ flesh and spirit?”

He does not move. He barely even blinks as he recites the cold, tired mantra under his breath: “I am King.”

“Even kings are mortal,” she counters softly, holding her hands out in invitation. He has no faith whatever that he is or ever will be worthy or wanted beyond his title. The brightest and most powerful spirit in the golden lands is terrified of losing even that much if he fails to be  _ perfect _ . He burns in secret, and he denies the flame even to himself, and Nialet silently offers a thousand sacrifices to the Mother of Sands if She will cut the thread of his cruel amali soon. Now if possible. “It is not the truth you want to hear, but it  _ is _ a true desire of my heart to tend the neglected gardens of my ambitious king, whether or not he is able to give me a child.”

“ _ Sa’ikhusa _ ,” he groans, dragging his hands over his face mournfully. “ _ How _ can I deny vo’dyat kalu?  _ Why _ must you challenge my discipline so?”

“ _ Perhaps _ my stubborn king would find his  _ discipline _ comes to heel better when he is  _ fed _ and  _ rested _ ,” she says, stealing his hand back. As wild herbs crave challenge and wither in cultivation, he hears argument better than affection. “Will you go the fuck to bed or do I march out the the hall and demand breakfast from Eidalu?”

Ganondorf sighs. “Unnecessary. I will summon-”

“You will  _ not _ .”

“Peace, vo’kalu - I have more than enough to - don’t give me that look! I have elixirs prepared, ok?”

“Chu jelly is  _ neither _ food nor rest, it is a  _ temporary _ restorative for the  _ field _ . Are you in a battle now? Are we on the border? Are the Hylians likely to gate their fool asses in here tonight and cause trouble?  _ No _ . Eat the damn fruit over there and open the door,” she insists, tempering the rebuke with a tiny kiss dropped on the back of his hand. As ginseng and teabush may be persuaded by degrees to thrive in prepared fields, perhaps even a great war king can be taught how to accept care.

He turns his golden eyes on her again and sighs mightily. “Very well. I will eat  _ only _ if you bring me  _ your _ favorite cake, and tell Eidalu I require her hands  _ at once _ .”


	60. Chapter 60

The Kharish are startled to see her. Nialet cannot decide if the sudden taut silence in the kitchens is more or less annoying than the bloom of gossip on the way. The larger of the women abandons the pale vegetables she was chopping to wash her hands and face on the far side of the room, and the smaller one hovers uncertainly at the middle table with her cracked egg dribbling into the bowl before her.

“Sav’aaq - pardon the interruption. Do you have or have supply for gant’shakroth?”

“That - is not the work of one day, l’vaisa. We can try to have a tray for the feast after the hay is mowed,” says the small one.

“I know it is laborious and I  _ know _ it is  _ supposed _ to cure, but can it be eaten fresh? Is there some - related confection in the storerooms? Or that can be done in a few hours?” Nialet folds her arms and tries not to notice the woman’s eyes roving over her fine silk caftan.

“Not here. Eidalu avadha Ramal would be a better one to ask, for the Sun’s Ray could summon a ready brick from the Golden Fortress or-”

“ _ Gamontirre sravoe  _ \- no, that will not do,” sighs Nialet. “There must be  _ something _ you can make? If I bring you an entire comb of honey, what can be made from that in an hour?”

The smaller Kharish shrugs helplessly and turns back to the mysterious balancing of egg slime between bits of shell. “Adorn it with mint and roses? That’s not how desserts work. If you are needing a cure for  _ overexertion _ , better if you sought the Akash for elixirs, and we will ensure your bowl is full tonight.”

Nialet swears, and sinks down on one of the benches at the near table, burying her face in her hands. She is certain there is a solution to his puzzle - he would not give her an impossible Trial, merely a difficult one. Padda rebuked her for not paying attention three days ago. The elaborate honey and walnut buttercakes are usually festival food, and thus more remarkable when their king eats them all the time. Legion gossip surely sings of other favorites - perhaps even more highly prized delicacies - but her mind refuses to summon anything useful.

“Do not despair so,” says a gentle stranger. “Though they might not be  _ cakes _ , there are many things we can prepare with courser honey, if that's what h- what you need. Tell me about the craving and I will consider the proper cure.”

“Not a craving but a riddle,” groans Nialet, unsurprised to look up into the soft eyes of the larger Kharish. 

“Hm, I am not known for such things, but I will try, l’vaisa. Would you rather we speak in the gardens?” The woman’s features are all rounded, and her charms beyond generous. Her pale blue linen kurta is stained and much mended, her elaborate braids bound back with a flour-dusted blue and gray strap in a common arrow pattern. Her earrings are also fancy, and dozens of bright studded bangles chatter at her hip where she tied them to her gray wrap while she works. Her sirwal beneath is indigo silk, with a hint of thread-of-silver at the cuff.

“I would rather not be needing to do this at all,” grumbles Nialet, forcing herself to stop staring at the poor woman. “Himself is in such  _ fine humor _ that he’s declared he won’t eat until I solve the riddle of his favorite cake.”

“That doesn’t sound like - I mean, did he give you no other hint?”

“None,” Nialet groans, dropping her head in her hands again. “ _ Bring your favorite cake and send Eidalu in.  _ That’s it.”

“Oh! But that’s easy!” The woman giggles and leans in with a conspiratorial tone. “He likes to eat but  _ hates _ planning meals. Asking you to bring  _ your _ favorites saves him the trouble of meeting with  _ us _ . What shall we prepare, l’vaisa?”

“No. He was explicit in his orders every time he came to us back home. This is a test, I’m sure of it. Promises it will soothe his temper if I  _ magically _ agree with him on some superior delicacy,  _ knowing _ the well-reported favorite is impossible. Brat.”

She gasps in shock, and giggles again. She  _ must _ outrank the other Kharish with such finery and bold manner, but she seems too frivolous and young for such responsibility. “Forgive me l’vaisa - it is a shock to be teased so, you understand. Everyone says you are so dry and sober. You’ve basked in the Sun’s Ray for  _ four hours _ , and yet claim he is in ill-temper with  _ you? _ ” 

Nialet raises her head and stares in horror. “No - sunset cannot be so soon. You are making a joke of me.”

The woman tips her head in confusion, and the beads in her many braids wink merrily. Her kohl seems a bit blurry, and her lips are stained as if with dark Trilby wine - or cosmetics too hastily wiped away. “I would never dare, l’vaisa. Please - tell me your favorite sweet, and I will see what humble magic I can manage for you.”

“I don’t have a favorite,” mumbles Nialet, caught by a horrible new realization: the soft Kharish was among the petitioners displaced by her actions. The woman was dressed for a tryst, and must have waited until the last possible moment to swallow her disappointment, throw a working garment over her finery, and prepare for the evening meal. 

“Nonsense. Everyone has favorites,” chides the Kharish with a brittle smile, settling on the opposite bench. “Tell me what you like on your birthday feasts, l’vaisa. Let’s start there.”

“Please - just Nialet. I’ve never quite been comfortable with the title,” she says, swallowing her shame and trying to furtively peer out one of the bubbly glass windows.

“As you wish,” says the woman shyly. “Please, I am happy to help. Do you like the little thimbleberry experiments perhaps?”

“The one with the stalks needs something to soften it,” says Nialet, then regrets it, for the woman winces and bows her head in shame. She fumbles to soften her wayward tongue. “It  _ was _ a clever use of that wild ruby-whatever monstrosity trying to eat the garden fence though.”

“Rhubarb,” mumbles the woman, blushing deeply. 

“Many of the local herbs grow in erratic patterns and turn unexpectedly bitter overnight. They challenge  _ me _ , so I can’t imagine the trouble they give  _ you _ ,” she tries, but the woman fidgets and looks even more uncomfortable. “Forgive me - it’s been so busy. I don’t think I’ve ever caught your name?”

“It’s alright,” mumbles the woman. “I have one pot of dried apricots, and two of figs. Let me - see how much cream remains from this morning, and perhaps a patchwork sweet yogurt or - depending on the sugarcane remaining, perhaps a nougat?”

Nialet sighs. “Honestly, I don’t think much about what’s on the table either. I like apricots as well as anybody I suppose, but there weren’t many fruits that would survive in my home village. Sour cherries, winterberries on the higher terraces in good years, plums when I was ilmaha, but there was a blight. Honey was the more common treat for us, and the talents of our Kharish leaned toward survival rather than art.”

“Forgive me,” mumbles the woman, bowing as she stands.

“Why? What for? I’m the one who brought you the damn unfair riddle.” Nialet stands in mirror of her, offering a hand in peace.

The poor soft Kharish salutes as for a renowned Rahalin, and flees the kitchens in a discordantly merry chime of silver ankle-bells and chattering bangles at her hip.

“The fuck did I say this time,” murmurs Nialet, peering through the portico door after the blur of blue and silver.

“Wouldn’t know,” says the remaining Kharish in an arch tone that conveys exactly the opposite. “The moon-hearted are too soft for the conquered lands.”


	61. Chapter 61

Hylian manors are almost universally dark, damp, and either too squat or too narrow to be pretty. The undercrofts are actually worse, and no storage space could be less suited to the damp climate. The unit assigned to this one has emptied, scoured, and limewashed several vaults near the kitchens, insulating them further to hopefully become a larder when the problem of ventilation is solved at last. If they cannot, at least it will be a tolerable space for racks of sealed bottles and glazed amphorae. 

The Kharish fled through them to - somewhere. The clean, newly-bricked floors allow no track of the woman, and beyond the third vault, the undercroft branches and several doors lead up into the manor proper, and others variously to stableyard, cowshed, or one of the close vegetable gardens.

Nialet stands at the crossing, baffled. The woman who remained in the kitchen could not have been any  _ less _ helpful short of active treason. The one who fled - she set aside her own disappointments and  _ tried _ to help - until Nialet’s sharp tongue once again slipped and cut where she never meant to. She could not imagine where this stranger might go for solace or solitude.  _ She _ might have retreated across the collonade perhaps, but rather than descend to the undercroft, she would have crossed through the herb garden and to the orchard beyond. Her green children drowse at the edge of twilight, undisturbed by any passing spirit.

So. 

The Kharish fled through trackless storage rooms across the north wing to - somewhere Nialet would  _ not _ go. Towards the east side of the manor. Above lays the servant’s hall, then the main public floor, then the level of solars and bedchambers, and on the third ‘proper’ floor the residence of the lordling’s family, which now houses the king, the rahallin, and the Hylian stewards who wisely bowed to the Golden Legions. 

At the center of the east wing, an ugly bump of stone juts out into the sun-gardens where even the Hylians know to plant everything that needs as much light as the heavens can give. It is closed off from the rest of the manor, as if the construction was an afterthought, accessible by only two small, heavy, iron-banded doors, one on the first public floor, and one two floors above. Nialet has never bothered to go in it - from the gardens she saw the many of the ridiculous narrow windows were shattered, the leading twisted and half-melted from whatever minor battle conquered the place. It is overall a ridiculous place for anyone to have sheltered, but Hylian logic is incomprehensible in any case.

So is the soft Kharish.

Nialet climbs to the public halls for lack of any better direction, and pulls open the heavy door to find the ugly annex is a chapel. The frescoes are scorched, the idols looted, and drifts of dirt and leaves gather in every alcove. The soft, blue-garbed Kharish huddles in the shadows below the triple-arched altarpiece, crying out in alarm when the door so inconveniently squeaks.

Nialet sighs. “Of all things I anticipated today, this was  _ not _ among them.”

The woman says nothing, but the vaulting stone amplifies her muffled whimper.

Nialet closes the door. “I’m not going to hurt you. Not on purpose, anyway. I didn’t mean to in the kitchens either. I’m not good with people.”

“Forgive me - it’s nothing - it’s not you l’vaisa,” stammers the woman.

Nialet folds her arms and reminds herself not to ruin the fine caftan with leaning against a pilaster or anything else foolish. “This is a lot of nothing to run to the Three for. I’m sorry for whatever it is I said, and for displacing your petition this afternoon. Unfortunately, I  _ do _ still need your help, avha.”

“Sorry, I will - manage something with the cakes in a moment, forgive my weakness l’vaisa,” she sniffles. “It’s nothing, just my own folly.”

Nialet considers the shadow of the poor woman, her shy words, and her place before the once-jeweled image of Din. “The rhubarb wasn’t  _ bad _ . Just different. Also if himself didn’t tell you,  _ he _ liked it. Sorry if it was a tribute and I wasn’t supposed to know about or taste. He didn’t say.”

“No, nothing like that,” she stammers.

“You were next after me, weren’t you?” Nialet does  _ try _ to speak softly, but all the woman does is sniffle anyway. “You have every right to anger. For what it’s worth, I had neither intent nor awareness of overstepping my hour. I’m sorry I delayed your petition, and that I must delay it further still.”

“It’s fine,” whispers the Kharish.

“It isn’t. But it  _ is _ necessary.”

The woman sniffles and says nothing. 

Nialet sighs, resigning herself to the probability of disgrace and punishment for her inevitable treason. She crosses to the edge of the altar platform, lowering her voice as much as she can, hoping it is soft enough for the frightened and grieving woman. “I need your help, avha. He hasn’t eaten since yesterday, he barely ate the day before, and he’s been working magic with the weather  _ every minute _ since his arrival.”

“But he’s  _ always _ hungry,” murmurs the woman.

“And he’s  _ also _ a young warrior and therefore a brooding, reckless idiot, convinced of his own immortality and superior reason like every other warrior is at that age,” grumbled Nialet, “Except when  _ he _ is in ill humor he  _ can’t _ eat. Howsoever hungry he might be. He demanded I eat  _ his _ breakfast yesterday, and speak of the rhubarb cake you invented, just in case he couldn’t manage before your appointment yesterday. It was important to him that you be spared the pain and doubt of seeing your work untouched, unknown.”

“Blessed Lady, I  _ must _ be dreaming,” murmurs the woman. 

“You are not, nor is the delay of your petition any sign whatsoever that you are in disfavor with himself. He spoke well of you  _ to me _ not even half an hour ago. My petition merely needed more time  _ today _ than his servant understood. But if you  _ cannot _ help me answer his riddle, Mother help me I will have no other path but to delay yours further.”

“Truly?”

“He names your spirit bright, soft, and kind.”

She winces. “ _ Soft _ from the Sun’s Ray is  _ not _ praise.”

“He is so pleased to attend your petition that he growled for the mere possibility  _ I _ might delay  _ you _ with mentioning his hunger.”

“Oh  _ no _ , you are the kind one l’vaisa, but mistaken. He surely growls because he is  _ already _ angry that I am late to serve his pleasure. I have served with the First Legion before. The Sun’s Ray  _ does not _ like to be hurried, and he requires perfect discretion and obedience from his Sparrows. If dinner is late - or  _ he _ is late  _ to _ dinner because I was tardy to kneel in readiness to sing if he commands it?” She does not finish, but shakes her head and covers her face with her soft hands.

Nialet frowns. “Ridiculous.”

She shakes her head again, sniffling and muffled. “It does not matter when he released  _ you _ , I should have been ready to kneel at once.”

“I am not  _ released _ , avha. I have invoked my petition rights under the law, and it is  _ I _ who do not release  _ him _ . He attends my petition even to this moment, as he will attend it when he eats whatever cake you invent to satisfy his riddle, even if I have to tie him down and force it onto his fool tongue.”

“Sa’deasa,” squeaks the poor woman.

“What manner of sweets have you already prepared or can manage in half an hour? Whatever is the richest and sweetest of those, let us say  _ that _ is my favorite, and let it be a seed to grow the feast from,” says Nialet, offering her hand for the woman to rise as soon as she recovers her courage.

“But he will  _ know _ we lie. His Sparrows-” 

“Are not any lesser because they are not Rocs. Come, avha Kharish, help me bury our stubborn young king in cakes,” says Nialet, offering a wry grin and endeavoring to look less intimidating. Somehow. Other people’s hearts have always been a mystery. “You can tell me on the way what name is sung for this treasured moon-sparrow who would take her tears to  _ Din _ , of all the softer gods she could seek instead.”

“It’s  _ complicated, _ ” the woman sighs, and pushes to her feet without help, sniffling and fussing with the drape of her garments, her bangles chattering merrily. Not ideal, but nonetheless progress. “Varesh avadha Kharish is honored by your grace, l’vaisa.”

**Author's Note:**

> This little novella is for all of you who have been such a vital support to me in some very dark times, whether you know it or not. Special thanks to emi_rose for gritty medical advice, and the entire Blupee Den for tolerating my kvetching while I wrote it. Some of you have already met Nialet and grown fond of her as I am, some of you have not. She is perhaps an acquired taste, but hopefully one you will enjoy.
> 
> Currently updating Mondays until we're done. 
> 
> The timeline of this piece fits most cleanly with the (accidentally epic, and as of 2020, ongoing for the foreseeable future) [East Wind.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5746192) Nonetheless, if you are familiar at all with the other works listed in the "inspired by" notations, you will notice most of these events still fit the other timelines, with minor adjustments to the _exact_ date and context.


End file.
